I ran through the implications at the speed of light. They had Paul’s DNA! That would be devastating for him, for both of us. And baby makes three.
“Whose is it?” I said carefully.
“We don’t know,” Bonnie answered.
Thank God for small mercies, I thought.
But unfortunately Bonnie wasn’t done.
“But we did get a cold hit from another crime scene,” she said. “How about that?”
What?! How about I shoot myself here in the Dragon Flower?
A vague and sickening dread hit the center of my chest like a punch.
“Run that by me again,” I said to Bonnie.
“The Feds’ CODIS database collects DNA samples from crime scenes across the country in order to ID perpetrators. It turns out, the same DNA from the semen on the blanket in your case was found at another crime scene — an armed robbery in Washington, DC. Happened nearly five years ago. The case was never closed.”
The dread that had been operating in my stomach suddenly shifted its strategy for attack and caught me in a hammerlock around the throat. I was having trouble thinking, even sitting in an upright position.
No. It couldn’t be. What Bonnie was saying meant that . . .
Paul had been involved in another crime? An armed robbery?
Chapter 96
THE WAITER CAME and Bonnie paid. Then she reached across the table and patted my shaking hands.
“I didn’t mean to drop all of this on you at once, Lauren,” Bonnie said. “I was as shocked as you are.”
Want to bet? I thought, dropping my eyes to the table.
“An armed robbery in DC?” I whispered through the cotton that had suddenly materialized in my mouth. “You’re sure about it, Bonnie?”
“The brief abstract they sent with the positive match said the DNA came from a blood sample found at an armed robbery in a DC hotel. But the case wasn’t solved, and it’s still open. The match means that we have anonymous secretions at two different crime scenes. Semen on the blanket used to cover Thayer. And blood in some DC hotel room.”
What did that mean? Obviously, they still didn’t know it was Paul’s. As if that mattered, I thought, dropping my pulverized head into my hands. As if anything did at this point.
Bonnie kept talking but I barely heard what she was saying. All I could do was blink and nod. The impossible had just happened. For the first time in a while, I had actually managed to stop caring about Scott’s case. I had a new distraction.
Almost five years ago Paul had committed some kind of armed robbery in a hotel room? My brain labored over that thought, then promptly went on strike.
Because that was impossible.
But DNA doesn’t lie.
When I looked up, I found Bonnie staring at me, waiting for some kind of comment.
“So what does this mean?” I said, as if I didn’t know the answer. “Victor Ordonez didn’t kill Scott Thayer?”
Bonnie looked out the window onto crowded Mott Street. There was pain in her eyes.
“I don’t know. How could I, Lauren? Maybe he just borrowed the blanket off a friend, but it definitely throws some doubt out there, doesn’t it?” she said. “The kind of doubt a defense lawyer would have a field day with. Not to mention the press jackals.”
I looked at the neon Chinese characters in the restaurant window. A black eel in the aquarium beside our booth batted his head against the glass as if trying to get my attention and say something. Hey, Lauren. Why don’t you just run screaming out of the restaurant? Don’t stop till you get to Bellevue.
Bonnie straightened the papers against the tabletop, pushed them back into the envelope, and stuffed the whole thing down into my bag.
“But I decided it’s the kind of doubt this city, this department, Scott’s wife, and most especially you, Lauren, don’t need thrown out there.”
She gestured toward my handbag.
“That’s why I’m giving it to you, honey. This case was screwed for everyone involved from the word go. This is my retirement present to you. The DC detective’s name and contact info are somewhere in those sheets, if you ever want to pursue it on your own. Or you can chuck it off the Brooklyn Bridge. Your choice.”
Bonnie planted a big kiss on my forehead as she stood up at our table.
“One thing I’ve learned as a cop is that you do what you can. It’s not our fault that sometimes that’s not enough. Lauren, you’re my friend, and I love you, and it’s up to you. See you around.”
Chapter 97
IT WAS A FEW HOURS LATER, and dark, when I found myself standing in Battery Park at the southern tip of Manhattan.
Manhattan, my father used to say before we’d start his thrice-weekly walks from this very park. The greatest treadmill in the world.
His postretirement exercise routine consisted of riding the subway here to the last stop, walking over to Broadway, and seeing how many of Manhattan’s thirteen concrete miles he could cover before he got tired and hopped on an uptown subway headed back home. All through law school, I’d go with him if I had the chance. Listen to him talk about the crimes and arrests that occurred at the countless intersections. It was on one of those walks with Dad that I decided I wanted to be a cop rather than a lawyer. Wanted to be just like my father.
And it was right here, at the beginning of one of those walks, all alone, that he died of a heart attack. As if he’d have it no other way than to pass on the streets of the city he served and loved.
I rested the FBI report against the rusted railing before me as I listened to the dark waves slap against the concrete pier.
Just when I’d completed the toughest puzzle ever, Dad, I thought.
I’d been handed an extra piece.
Story of my life recently.
“What do I do, Pop?” I whispered as tears fell down my cheeks. “I don’t know what to do.”
There were exactly two options, I knew.
I could toss away Bonnie’s gift, like I had the rest of the evidence, and head to my new life in Connecticut, a blissful soccer-mom-to-be.
Or I could slap myself out of my denial and figure out what the hell was going on with my life, and with my mysterious husband.
I held the envelope over the railing.
This was an easy one, right?
All I had to do was release my fingers and it would be over.
I would go to the train and head north, where safety, my husband, and my new life waited.
A gust of wind picked up off the water, flapping the envelope in my hand.
Let it go, I thought. Let it go, let it go.
But, finally, I dug my nails into the envelope and clutched it to my chest.
I couldn’t. I needed to get to the bottom of this, no matter how hard, how ugly, it got. Even after everything I had pulled, all the craziness, all the hurting my friends and covering things up, I guess there was still some scrap of detective left in me. Maybe more than a scrap.
I closed my eyes tightly. Somewhere in the darkness of the park behind me, I sensed an old man stretching his legs, limbering up for a walk. As I turned around quickly to find a taxi, out of the corner of my eye I felt a figure nodding in my direction, a smile on his face.
Chapter 98
IT WAS A LITTLE AFTER EIGHT the next morning when the barista at the Starbucks across from Paul’s Pearl Street office building raised an eyebrow at me in surprise.
Jeez, I thought. You’d think she’d never seen a disheveled, emotionally demolished woman ask for the entire top shelf of the pastry case before.
After last night’s Battery Park epiphany, I’d called Paul and told him that Bonnie wanted me to stay over in the city for old time’s sake. Then I’d wandered up Broadway, like the homeless person I now was, until about midnight.
I’d made it all the way to The Midtown, just south of the Ed Sullivan Theater, when my legs quit on me.
I had just enough strength to toss the questionable orange-speckled bedspread into the corner
of my three-hundred-dollar-a-night closet before I passed out. Pretty pricey, but Paul could afford it.
I woke up at 7 a.m., left the hotel without showering, and caught a taxi on Seventh Avenue, heading downtown to the financial district.
For the first time in a month, I had a game plan. I knew exactly what I had to do.
Interrogate Paul.
I didn’t care what it took. I’d be both good cop and bad cop. I was tempted to bring the hotel phone book along in case I had to beat the truth out of him. One thing was certain. Paul was going to tell me what the hell was going on if it was the last thing he ever did.
And based on the way I was feeling as I stood in the Starbucks across from his office, that was a distinct possibility.
“Anything else?” the barista asked, pushing my five-figure-calorie breakfast across the counter.
“You don’t have anything else,” I told her.
In an oversize purple velvet wing chair positioned by the window, I read the FBI report, cover to cover.
I stared at the autoradiographs — the DNA vertical barcodes — for both crime scenes until my vision blurred.
There was no mistake, no denying what the pages said. I didn’t have to know what variable number tandem repeat meant or what the heck an STR locus was to see that the two samples were one and the same.
I put the report down, and with one eye on the revolving doors of Paul’s black-glass office building across the narrow street, I commenced a world-record round of compulsive eating. Hey, alcohol and nicotine were out. What’s a very pissed-off, pregnant cop supposed to do?
I was licking chocolate icing off my fingers fifteen minutes later when, through the scrum of business suits and power ties, I spotted the sandy head of a man Paul’s height turning into the office building. Good-looking guy, no denying it. That was one constant about my husband. Maybe the only one.
I knocked back the last of an espresso brownie, slowly brushed myself off, and grabbed the latte-stained FBI report.
Come out with your hands up, Paul, I thought as I crossed the still-shadowy canyon of Pearl Street. Your pissed-off, pregnant wife has a gun in her handbag.
But as I stood in line behind a FedEx guy at the security desk, I noticed something odd.
Paul was in the open door of one of the elevators.
Here we go again, I thought.
Unlike the rest of the invading, pin-striped financial army, he was making his way out, like a salmon swimming upstream, a lone salmon.
Whatever, I thought, taking a quick step toward him through the crowd. This saves me an elevator trip.
But as I got closer, I noticed the carry-on strapped across his chest. And the shopping bag in his hand.
The blue Tiffany shopping bag.
I stopped dead-still, and stayed silent as I watched him head toward the doorway.
Chapter 99
CARRY-ON? TIFFANY BAG? Where was Paul going? What the hell was happening now? Did I really want to know?
Yes! I needed to find out, I decided, as I watched him flag a taxi.
His cab was pulling out when I whistled and caught the next one pulling in.
“At the risk of sounding clichéd,” I told the orange-turbaned driver. “Follow that cab.”
So we did. Up to Midtown Manhattan. Then through the Midtown Tunnel onto the Long Island Expressway.
When our cabs reached the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, I called Paul’s cell.
“Hey, Paul. What’s up?” I said when he answered after a couple of ring-a-dings.
“Lauren,” Paul said. “How was your sleepover?” I could actually see him through the rear window of the taxi in front of me, holding his cell to his ear.
“Terrific,” I said. “Listen, Paul. I’m bored out of my mind. I was thinking of heading down to see you for lunch today. What do you say? That be okay?”
Here it is, Paul. Your moment of truth.
“Can’t, babe,” Paul said. “You know Mondays are impossible. We got six earnings reports coming in that have to be crunched and recrunched. I can see my boss from my desk right now. He’s knocking back beta-blockers with his venti. If I get out of here by eight tonight, I’ll be lucky. I’m sorry. I’ll make it up to you, promise. How are you feeling?”
The green sign we were speeding under said “LaGuardia Airport.” I had to hold my hand over the mouthpiece on my cell in order to muffle a sob.
“Just fine, Paul,” I said after a second. “Don’t worry about me. See you tonight.” If not sooner, babe!
At the airport, I had to flash my badge and NYPD ID in order to get past the security checkpoint without a ticket. Then I stayed well back in the torrent of people as I followed Paul down the departures concourse, past the regiments of newsstands and gift shops and open bars.
He stopped suddenly, about a hundred feet ahead of me. He sat down at Gate 32.
Keeping my distance by a bank of pay phones, I felt like an ulcer exploded open in my stomach when I saw his destination.
Washington, DC.
Chapter 100
IT COST ME $175 to snag a last-minute seat on Paul’s flight. What was I saying? It cost Paul $175. Excellent.
Watching from a restaurant across the departure concourse, I literally flinched as Paul was checking in for the business-class boarding call.
That was because the attendant at the counter did something more than a little odd after he handed Paul his ticket stub.
He punched Paul’s fist playfully — as if they were old pals! What was that all about?
I snatched a discarded newspaper from the boarding area to shield my face as I passed through the front cabin, but I needn’t have bothered. A glance showed me that he was engrossed in conversation with the man on his right — another frequent flier, I supposed.
If there was a good thing to say about my second-to-last, back-row seat in coach, it was that there was no way for Paul and me to bump into each other during the flight. Oh, and it had a handy barf bag. One that I made use of promptly after takeoff.
Pregnancy and motion sickness and watching your world go up in apocalyptic flames — really bad combination.
“Sorry,” I said to my thoroughly disturbed female executive neighbor, who was on the phone. “Baby on the way. Morning has broken.”
The really tricky part came when we landed in Washington. Paul, along with the rest of the corporate-class dweebs, got off first. So I really had to hightail it out to the arrival gate in order to see which way he’d gone.
But by the time I’d made it to the taxi line on the street, there was no sign of him.
Damn it, damn it, damn it! What a waste this whole trip down here had been.
I was doubling back, heading up the escalator, when I saw him coming out of the men’s room. He’d changed into jeans and a nice blue sweater — and he wasn’t wearing his glasses anymore.
What kept me from screaming his name right then and there, I don’t know. His ass was so busted it was unreal.
Instead, I just double-timed it back down the stairs and continued to trail my deceitful husband.
I needed to know firsthand just how deep he’d sunk the blade into my back.
Paul went directly past the taxi line through the sliding glass doors into the street. The doors were closing when I saw him do something that made me stop in my tracks and just stare.
He opened the passenger door of a shiny black Range Rover that was idling at the curb.
I decided to run then.
By the time I’d made it ten feet outside, the sleek luxury SUV was already moving, tires shrieking as it cut off a minibus and shot into the left lane.
My eyes strained to get the license plate number as I ran across the exhaust-stained pavement after it.
It was a DC plate starting with 99.
I gave up on the rest of the plate number and tried to get a quick look at the driver. I wanted to see who, or more specifically what gender, the person was who had just picked up my husband.
&nbs
p; But the windows were tinted. I discovered that little fact about the same moment that I tripped over a golf bag and gave the hallowed ground of our nation’s capital an enthusiastic, chest-bumping high-five.
Chapter 101
NOT EXACTLY SURE where to start looking for Paul, I decided to pay Roger Zampella, the contact detective listed in the FBI report, a visit.
I’d never met Roger face-to-face, of course. He turned out to be a large, well-dressed African American with a smile brighter than the polished buckles of his polka-dot suspenders.
When I called him from the airport, he’d immediately invited me over to his squad room at the Metro DC Second District Station on Idaho Avenue. I arrived to catch him just beginning an early lunch at his desk.
“You don’t mind if I eat while we talk, do you, Detective?” he said, flipping his silk pink-and-green repp tie over his shoulder. He tucked a napkin into the white collar of his two-tone baby blue banker’s shirt before upending a brown lunch bag onto his desk with a flourish.
A small apple slid out, along with a Quaker oatmeal bar about the size of a used bar of soap.
He cleared his throat.
“My wife,” he explained as he tore open the bar’s wrapper with his teeth, “just saw the results of my latest cholesterol test. I got an F-minus. You said on the phone you wanted to talk to me about a robbery? I should have told you, I’m in Homicide now.”
“It’s actually from nearly five years ago,” I said. “I was wondering if you could recall anything about it. The case number was three-seven-three-four-five. An armed robbery at the Sheraton Crystal City Hotel in Arlington, Virginia, across the river from the capital. The perpetrator —”
“Left some blood,” Detective Zampella said without any hesitation. “The ticket-broker thing. I remember it.”
“You have a good memory,” I said.
“You never forget the open ones, unfortunately,” he said.
“You said something about a ticket broker?”
Zampella sniffed at the oatmeal bar before he took a dainty squirrel nibble.
“The Sheraton, this is the one out near Reagan National Airport, was hosting the annual NCAA football coaches’ convention,” he said as he chewed. “All the big schools’ coaches and assistant coaches receive Final Four tickets every year for free. These ticket brokers — glorified ticket scalpers, if you want my opinion — just set up shop in the hotel and buy them up. Pay out cash right there and then. Illegal, of course, but we’re talking about college recruiters. They’ve been known to bend a few rules.”