Sam had been speaking to all three men, but she directed her last question specifically to McCord. “You said Valente was ‘calculating,’ yet he’s been visiting her openly at her apartment. Last night, he took her out to dinner—very publicly—and then he spent the night with her, even though he obviously knows he’s under surveillance.” She lifted her hands, palms up. “Why would a cold, calculating man do such reckless things?”
“Based on my firsthand knowledge of man’s basest nature,” McCord said with a mocking smile, “I would have to assume that Leigh Manning offered herself to Valente as part of the bargain, and he’s extremely eager to start collecting payment.”
“You mean,” Sam paraphrased with a smile, “he has the hots for her?”
“Obviously.”
“I see,” Sam said wryly. “So—apparently the ‘Ice Man’ is actually so ‘hot’ that he’s willing to risk a death sentence to be with her?”
McCord sighed, but he didn’t argue. He couldn’t.
“I’m not saying Valente didn’t murder Logan Manning,” Sam added, “but I’ve met him, and I don’t think he’s as inhumanly cold and emotionless as you’ve been told. I was watching him when he got his first look at Mrs. Manning’s Mercedes as it was being winched up to the road. He looked completely shaken and almost ill when he saw it. I also saw him carry her in his arms—up a steep hill, through deep snow—from the cabin to the main road. I’ll be interested in hearing what you think of him,” Sam finished.
McCord glanced at his watch. “Then let’s go have a talk with him, so I can decide for myself.” He phoned Holland’s clerk and told him the interview was about to begin; then he pushed back his chair.
“If you ask me,” Womack said as they all stood up to head toward the interview rooms, “Detective Littleton thinks the Ice Man is hot stuff.”
Sam made a joke of it as she picked up her pad and pencil, though what she said was what she thought. “I think he’s very attractive—in a dangerous, unfriendly sort of way.”
As she finished speaking, she happened to glance at McCord, who was walking around his desk toward her, and she found herself momentarily impaled by a pair of blue eyes as sharp as daggers. “Is that right?” he inquired in a deliberately offhand tone that completely belied the expression in his eyes.
“Nope, not really,” Sam said unhesitatingly . . . untruthfully . . . and completely unintentionally. Stunned by her involuntary reply, she started across the squad room toward the interview rooms, with Shrader and Womack in the lead, while she tried to understand what had just happened. That look on McCord’s face had been there either because he thought she was biased in favor of a suspect—and a criminal, to boot. Or because he had been jealous. No, it couldn’t have been jealousy, Sam decided. No way. Not McCord. Not possible.
After momentarily examining the reasons for her own reaction, Sam concluded that she’d denied her stated opinion of Valente either because she didn’t want McCord to think her professional opinions could be influenced by any man, no matter how attractive he might be. Or—and she didn’t like this possibility—because jealousy was an uncomfortable, unpleasant feeling and she didn’t want to do anything, ever, to make that amazing man feel an unnecessary moment of unpleasantness. If so, that would indicate her feelings for him were very tender, and that he already meant a great deal more to her than she realized. But he didn’t. She would never be foolish enough to let that happen.
Beside her, McCord sent her a slanted little smile and lowered his voice. “I think we got through our first lovers’ quarrel pretty well, don’t you?”
Sam turned the corner too sharply, and nearly hit the wall.
He spared her the need to reply by abruptly switching to the matter ahead as they neared the interview rooms at the end of the next hallway. “Shrader, do you want to sit in, or do you want to watch it from the other side of the mirror?”
“Since I’m not going to participate, I’d rather watch from outside. The view’s broader from further away.”
When Womack said virtually the same thing, McCord looked at Sam.
“I’d like to sit in on it,” she said instantly. “I wish you’d ask him about his relationship with Mrs. Manning while he’s here.”
“If he’s come here to hand me a solid alibi, there’s no point in asking him about her, or anything else, because he’ll tell me to fuck off. Mr. Valente,” McCord continued snidely, “doesn’t like us to ‘pry’ into his affairs. He once made the State’s prosecutors spend months trying to force him to hand over some records they wanted to see in connection with their fraud case against him. First his lawyers stalled, then they argued, then they fought against it all the way to the New York Supreme Court. Do you know what happened when the Supreme Court finally made him turn over the files the prosecutors wanted?”
“No, what?”
“The records completely exonerated him. Valente knew they would. If he’s actually got an ironclad alibi today, he’s not going to give me one molecule of additional information. In fact, I still can’t believe he’s planning to volunteer anything. It’s a real first for him.”
Chapter 55
* * *
Formerly called “interrogation rooms,” the interview rooms were located on the far side of the third floor, diagonally opposite McCord’s office, between two short, busy hallways at the rear of the building. The front hallway had entrance doors into the rooms and large glass windows where passersby could see, and be seen. The rear hallway had one-way mirrors where detectives and police officers could gather to observe and hear what was taking place in each room without being observed themselves.
Instead of waiting inside the interview room as they’d been instructed to do, Michael Valente and his attorney were standing outside it in the hall, drinking coffee. It was, Sam decided, a small but deliberate defiance designed to subtly wrest control from McCord.
McCord took it as such and retaliated by stalking past both men without a glance. He opened the door to the interview room, and with a rude jerk of his head, he snapped an order at them. “Inside!”
Shrader and Womack were already making the turn to the back hall as Captain Holland strode past Sam with four other men, all headed in the same direction. Valente’s voluntary appearance at the precinct was evidently drawing a crowd, Sam realized, wondering how many people were already gathered back there to watch the proceedings through the one-way mirror.
She waited for Buchanan and Valente to precede her into the room; then she followed them inside and closed the door.
McCord went to the right side of the oblong table in the center of the room. “Sit down,” he ordered his adversaries, nodding toward the chairs on the left of the table.
Valente unhurriedly sat down; then he opened his topcoat, leaned back in his chair, and casually propped his right ankle atop his opposite knee—a deliberately indolent posture that conveyed his utter lack of respect for the occasion, and for the detectives present.
McCord angled his chair sideways, put his yellow tablet in his lap, and looked over his right shoulder at Valente, impatiently tapping the end of his pencil on the table. Waiting.
Sam made a mental snapshot of the two silent men and subtitled it: “If I can’t win, I won’t play.”
Buchanan sat down, opened his briefcase, and broke the electrified silence by saying, “It’s our belief that Mr. Valente is a suspect in the murder of Logan Manning.”
McCord’s gaze shifted to Buchanan, and he shrugged. “No one has accused him of that.”
“That’s true. In fact, no one’s even questioned him. Why is that, Lieutenant?”
“I’m the one who asks the questions,” McCord explained as if he were reprimanding a rude fourth grader on a field trip at the precinct, “and you’re the one who gives the answers. Now, you asked for this meeting. If you have something to say, say it. Otherwise,” McCord added acidly, “there’s the door. Use it.”
Gordon Buchanan’s aristocratic face remained perfectly
composed, but Sam saw a muscle begin to tick in the side of Valente’s clamped jaw. “For the record,” Buchanan said smoothly and unemotionally, “Mr. Valente could not possibly be your murderer. Here is a schedule of his whereabouts on that Sunday, along with names and phone numbers of witnesses who can verify his presence. As you will discover when you read this, my client was at lunch and then a Knicks game with three business associates. After the game, the men went to the Century Club, where they discussed business until six. At nine P.M., he had dinner in a public restaurant where he is known and recognized, with a woman whose name is on that list. At one A.M., he returned home, where he made several lengthy telephone calls to business associates in Asia. His chauffeur, his doorman, and his telephone records will all verify the last part of that.”
McCord reached for the paper and then deliberately ignored it once it was in his hand. “I’m told Mr. Valente doesn’t like to volunteer information. One might even say that he always goes out of his way to be uncooperative. I’m curious about his motives for coming here today and offering information to assist us in this particular case.”
Buchanan closed his briefcase. “My client’s motives are none of your business. Your business is—presumably—to find Logan Manning’s real murderer.”
“Suppose I were to tell you that Mrs. Manning is our primary suspect,” McCord drawled. “What would you say to that?”
Valente’s savage voice was like the crack of a whiplash. “I would say you’re out of your fucking mind.”
McCord’s head snapped toward Valente, and Sam watched the two foes finally confront each other eye to eye—a cunning hunter, a dangerous predator. They were silent for a moment, mentally circling each other; then the hunter smiled. “I was under the impression you and Mrs. Manning were complete strangers until the night you met at her party. Do you have more than a casual interest in her?”
“Cut the bullshit!” Valente snapped, rolling to his feet with the sudden, deadly grace of the panther he reminded Sam of at that moment. “You’ve had us both under surveillance for weeks. You know damned well she spent the night with me last night.”
Buchanan hurriedly stood up, too, giving Sam the impression the attorney was worried about what his client might do next, but McCord was moving in for another attack. “You knew her a long time ago, didn’t you? Fourteen years ago, to be exact.”
“You just figured that out?” Valente shook his head as if he couldn’t believe the stupidity he had to deal with: then he walked out with Buchanan on his heels.
For several moments, McCord stared after them, his jaw clenched with inexplicable anger; then he said softly, as if to himself, “Son of a bitch! He was ready to talk. . . .”
He glanced over at Sam and said in furious self-disgust, “I should have gauged him myself, but I thought I knew everything there was to know about him from his files, so I shoved him into a wall right from the start. I showed him how tough I was, so he had to show me he didn’t give a shit. You were right, Sam. The Ice Man has a hot spot—no, he’s got a soft spot for Leigh Manning. If I hadn’t strong-armed him, if I’d have played straighter with him, I think he’d have told me something I needed to know. He’ll never give us another shot—”
Jumping to her feet, Sam ran for the door.
“Where are you going?”
“To try to play straight with him!” she called over her shoulder, racing toward the back hall and the stairwell there. She shoved past a startled Captain Holland and his group, who were still standing by the one-way mirror, talking about Valente’s visit. Praying the elevators would be as crowded and slow as they usually were, she slammed against the heavy stairwell door and sprinted down two flights of stairs, her footsteps ringing loudly, her heartbeat almost matching them.
Chapter 56
* * *
The first floor was crowded with the usual mix of uniformed police officers, ordinary citizens, and attorneys heading in different directions, but Valente and Buchanan were nowhere in sight. Sam sprinted to the main doors, shoved one open, and saw the two men walking swiftly down the steps toward a black Mercedes limousine gliding up to the curb. “Mr. Valente!” she shouted.
Both men turned and watched her run toward them, Buchanan with a frown of surprise, Valente with an expression of scathing disbelief.
Specks of snow were swirling in the wind as Sam wrapped her arms around herself and tried to take control of a situation for which she was neither prepared, nor even dressed. “Mr. Valente,” Sam began, “there are some questions, I’d—”
Buchanan interrupted her, his tone as frigid as the wind flattening her thin shirt against her skin. “You had your chance to ask your questions upstairs, Detective. This is an inappropriate place for whatever you have in mind.”
Sam ignored the irate lawyer and focused the full force of her appeal on his cynical client. Trying to “play it straight,” she said sincerely, “Mr. Valente, I’m a minority of one, but I’ve never been convinced that either you or Mrs. Manning murdered her husband.”
“If this is a good-cop, bad-cop routine,” Valente said contemptuously, “you’re lousy at it.”
“Give me time, I’m still new at my job,” Sam quipped, shivering, and she thought she witnessed a slight, momentary crack in his glacial expression. Resorting to a tone of innocent sincerity that bordered embarrassingly on naïveté, Sam tried to sidle through that crack in his resistance. “I’ve only been a detective for a few weeks, so maybe I’m doing this all wrong, but if you could just explain something to me, then maybe I could help—”
“I repeat, Detective—this sidewalk is not the place for you to question my client,” Buchanan warned angrily. To Valente he added, “We’re going to be late.” The chauffeur was standing at the rear of the limousine, and he opened the door as soon as Buchanan turned toward him.
The lawyer got into the car and Valente turned to follow him, but Sam stayed on his heels. “Mr. Valente, why did you and Mrs. Manning pretend not to know each other?”
“I’ve never pretended anything of the kind,” Valente said curtly, sliding onto the backseat of his car.
That was true, Sam realized, recalling his behavior with Leigh Manning when Sam had seen them together. She leaned into the car so the chauffeur couldn’t close the door, and, shivering convulsively, she tried to reason with Valente one last time. “That’s right, you didn’t—but Mrs. Manning did pretend, and that’s what’s creating our doubts and suspicion. If you really want us to look elsewhere for suspects, then you need to answer my question. Do you want us to look elsewhere—” She started to say “other than you and Mrs. Manning”; then she pressed his button with Leigh Manning: “—elsewhere, other than Mrs. Manning?”
He hesitated, and then to Sam’s joyous surprise, he snapped, “Get into the car.”
Sam climbed in, and the chauffeur closed the door. “Thank you,” she said, rubbing her arms and trying to stop her teeth from chattering. She opened her mouth to ask a question, then stopped in shock as the limo pulled away from the curb.
“I’m late for an appointment in midtown,” Valente said, his words clipped. “Do you want to get out?” he challenged. “Or do you want to go along for the ride?”
Sam caught the veiled irony in that last question, and she discarded several glib replies that came to mind. Her instincts warned her against sparring with him on any level, because she had the feeling Michael Valente was a far more formidable opponent than even his reputation allowed. She hesitated, wondering if she dared reveal anything about the note he wrote Leigh Manning to accompany the pears: then she decided to risk it. If he had an alibi, that note wasn’t going to do McCord a bit of good. Even if his alibi didn’t hold up, Buchanan would learn of the note under the rules of discovery.
“I’m waiting, Detective,” Valente said impatiently.
Sam decided to opt for absolute sincerity if he’d let her—and for a new career if she’d already made the wrong decisions. “When Mrs. Manning was still in the hospit
al,” she explained, “Detective Shrader came across a phone message from you, and he asked her if she knew you. She lied and said she’d met you for the first time at her party, a few nights before. Do you know why she lied?”
“She wasn’t lying,” he retorted.
Sam began to lose faith in McCord’s judgment about Valente being “ready to talk.” She looked at him, searching his forbidding features. “How long have you known Mrs. Manning?”
“Fourteen years.”
Sam breathed an imperceptible sigh of relief. That at least was an honest answer, but she wasn’t pleased with how she had to go about getting it. Carefully banishing all confrontational undertones from her voice, she said quietly, “If you will try to overcome your understandable resentment of having to answer my very personal questions—and answer them fully—I will try to ask as few of them as I can. And I’ll even answer yours. Deal?”
Although he refused to make any such “deal” with her, he at least clarified his last answer. “She didn’t recognize me when she met me at her party, because we hadn’t seen each other in fourteen years. I had a beard when she knew me before.”
“Are you saying she didn’t even recognize your name?” Sam asked skeptically.
“She knew me by another name.”
“Would that be ‘Falco’ or would it be ‘Nipote’?” she prodded, watching for his reaction.
His reaction was a short, sardonic laugh. “You took the note I sent her with the pears,” he said, shaking his head in disgust. “You people are unbelievable.”
Reluctant to admit she had the note if she didn’t need to, Sam said, “How would you reach a conclusion about a note from what I asked you?”
“You figure it out, Detective.”