“Yes, sir.”
“Let’s not quibble about a number. Can we just say you went next door and kept Kimi company lots of times? Or should we say often?”
“Lots of times.”
“Did her mother know?”
“Nobody knew,” Audrey volunteered. “I told Kimi if she told anybody, they’d yell at me, and I would never be able to come back.”
“Did you ever do anything to harm Kimi?” Woloch asked gently.
“Oh, God, no,” Yeager said. “I…I loved her. I never had children. I couldn’t stand to watch how her mother treated her.” Her eyes welled up, and tears ran down both cheeks. “I was like a surrogate mommy. She called me Mama Audrey. She was…she was the best thing that ever happened to me, and that…that…”
Audrey Yeager was a lady, and whatever word was forming in her brain never came out of her mouth.
Woloch walked to the defense table and handed her a box of tissues. He waited until Audrey regained her composure. “Go on,” he said. “Please.”
Audrey took a deep breath. “Kimi was the best thing that ever happened to me,” she repeated, “and Rachael murdered her.”
“You may be right,” Woloch said. “It’s very possible that Rachael O’Keefe came home that night and murdered her daughter.”
He paused and let the thought sit with the jury.
“But!” he screamed, and Meredith knew what was coming next.
“But,” Woloch repeated softly, “Kimi was a love-starved child, willing—even eager—to open the door for anyone who heard her sobs and wanted to comfort her.”
“Objection.”
“Overruled.”
“Maybe there was another compassionate neighbor. Or a not-so-compassionate neighbor who was tired of the incessant crying. Or a mentally deranged pizza deliveryman. Or any one of a thousand random strangers who could have wandered into the building while the doorman ran off for a quick bathroom break. So it could have been her,” he said, pointing at Rachael and raising his voice again. “Or it could have been anybody. Am I right, Audrey?”
She shook her head.
“Speak up!”
“Yes, you’re right.”
He turned to the jury. “Yes, I’m right. It…could…have…been…anybody. And Kimi, desperate for attention, would have opened the door and let that person in.”
He walked slowly back to the defense table and pulled out his chair.
“And that, ladies and gentlemen of the jury—as Ms. Yeager, who is a legal assistant, can tell you—is what we call reasonable doubt. Very, very, very reasonable doubt,” he said, and sat down.
The jury was mesmerized.
Once again, the Warlock had cast his spell.
Chapter 28
Kylie and I rolled up Third Avenue, both of us lost in our own heads. I was writing soap opera scenarios, all ending with Cheryl dumping me for Matt Smith. Knowing Kylie, I figured she was probably plotting how she could use her superpowers to save her husband from self-destruction.
We hung a right on 92nd Street and pulled up to a disaster area known as the Second Avenue Subway project.
The grand idea to bore a subway tunnel under Second Avenue from Harlem to the financial district was first proposed decades before I was born. They finally broke ground in 2007, and if they ever fund and finish the entire eight mile run, it will be long after I’m dead. In the meantime, Second Avenue from 63rd to 96th looks like Baghdad after the shock and awe.
We parked on First and walked back. Fall was in the air. The temperature had dropped to the low forties, and the bars along Second were in full-scale Halloween promotion mode, their windows adorned with posters of goblins, ghosts, vampires, and Sam Adams Octoberfest beer.
Our first stop was the Foggy Goggle, which is typical of the cutesy bar names on the Upper East Side. When I was a kid, our local gin mill was Chop’s Tavern, but nobody in this zip code is going to pay fifteen bucks for an appletini at a joint called Chop’s.
Monday nights during football season are as busy as Fridays, and even though neither of the New York teams were playing, the place was packed with fanatics hoping to see the New England Patriots get clobbered by Miami.
We had flyers of Evelyn and started with our best bet—the smokers outside the bar. A few had seen her on the evening news, but nobody had seen her walk past the bar on Friday night. Nobody inside was any help either.
The next stop was Sticks and Balls, where there were almost as many people in the back room watching the Monday night pool tournament as there were rooting against the Patriots.
Kylie and I split up to work the room. At least half a dozen guys, their testosterone fueled by alcohol, thought they “just might know something” and offered to discuss it with Kylie over a drink.
Kylie had a stock answer: “Great. How about my place—Nineteenth Precinct. You can spend the night.”
After ten minutes, we knew we’d struck out again and moved on to Not a Health Club. The name must have resonated with their target audience, because there were at least twice as many smokers outside as there had been at the first two bars.
One by one, they looked at Evelyn’s picture and shook their heads. We had questioned about half of them when one of the smokers walked up to Kylie and said, “I’m Romeo. You been looking for me?”
He was five feet six, 250 pounds, with thinning, curly hair and a thick, unruly beard that made his moon-pie face even rounder. I seriously doubted if any woman was looking for him—especially if his pickup line was “I’m Romeo. You been looking for me?”
“Am I looking for you for what?” Kylie said.
“You’re the cops, right? You’re looking for information about her,” he said, pointing at the flyer in Kylie’s hand. “I’m the guy who called you. Joe Romeo.”
“When did you call?” Kylie said.
“Tonight, right after I heard about this Evelyn Parker-Steele murder on the six o’clock news. I called the crime stoppers hotline number on your website. The one where they give you a two-thousand-dollar reward if my tip helps you nail the killer. Then I called them back at seven thirty and told them I can’t hang around my apartment all night, and you could meet me here.”
When there’s a page-one homicide, our tip line logs hundreds of calls. Eventually the department follows up on all of them, so there was no sense telling Romeo his message was buried at the bottom of a slush pile.
“Oh, yes,” I said. “We got both calls. Tell us what you know, Mr. Romeo.”
“It was Friday night around eleven. I’m out here having a smoke, and I see this Evelyn Parker-Steele walking up Second. I didn’t know who she was at the time, but I was checking her out. I’m in the rag trade, and this woman knew how to dress. Gray pantsuit, burgundy silk blouse, Brian Atwood slingbacks—not cheap.”
“Did you see where she walked to?” Kylie asked. “Did she turn the corner? Pop into another bar?”
“No, a car pulled up alongside her,” he said, taking a drag on his cigarette. “A black SUV.”
“Did you see the driver?” I said.
“No, but the guy in the backseat rolled down the window, and he called out to her.”
The guy in the backseat? Kylie and I looked at each other.
“You’re sure the man was in the backseat?” I asked.
“Yeah. I could tell she didn’t know him. I figured he was just some douchebag hitting on random chicks, but she walked over to him. Now I’m totally tuned in, because I’m waiting for her to tell him to fuck off, but she listens for maybe ten seconds, opens the door, and gets in.”
“She just got in?” I said. “He didn’t step out of the car and help her in?”
He shook his head. “Nope. She just hopped in the back.”
“But you’re absolutely sure there were two men in the car,” I said. Eyewitnesses who have been drinking are not that reliable, and I was pushing Romeo to see if he stuck with his story.
“No,” he said. “I’m not sure there were two men. I
never saw the driver. It could have been a woman or a trained monkey.”
“Can you describe the man in the backseat?”
“He was white.”
“What else?”
“I don’t know. I never saw his face, but his hand was resting on the window. Hey, don’t try to beat me out of the reward just because I couldn’t see faces. I gave you the black car and a white guy. That’s gotta be worth something.”
“Absolutely,” I said. “You’ve been very helpful. Thank you for calling it in.”
Romeo stubbed out his cigarette, handed Kylie his business card, and waddled into the bar.
“He described the clothes she was wearing,” Kylie said. “And the fact that he saw Evelyn get into a car backs up Matt’s theory that she drove down Second and onto the Fifty-Ninth Street Bridge toward Queens before her cell signal went dead.”
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s recap. We’ve got two suspects, one male, one gender undetermined, in a black SUV headed for Queens—and the male suspect definitely has a white hand.”
Kylie couldn’t help grinning. “Narrows it right down,” she said.
Chapter 29
Kylie and I wrapped it up by 10:15. At 10:16, I called Cheryl at home. No answer. I didn’t leave a message.
By 6:00 the next morning, I got to Gerri’s Diner and sat at my usual table. Much to my surprise, Gerri herself waved off the waitress and was there in seconds, pouring me hot coffee.
“So, Zach,” she said, “how’s it going with the lady shrink?”
The diner is around the corner from the precinct, and Gerri Gomperts, who is a cross between a den mother and Dear Abby, makes it her business to know everybody else’s business. The running joke at the One Nine is that if Internal Affairs needs to know anything about any of our cops, they walk straight past the precinct house and go directly to the diner.
Gerri had been following my relationship with Cheryl since before I even knew there was a relationship.
“It’s going okay, I guess,” I said, faking a smile.
Gerri faked a smile back. “That’s so romantic. And yet you hardly ever hear any love songs with the lyrics ‘It’s going okay, I guess.’”
Cheryl showed up five minutes later and joined me. Gerri was right on her heels. “Good morning, Dr. Robinson,” she said, pouring Cheryl some coffee.
“What?” I said. “No soy latte?”
They both gave me a look that let me know the dig had fallen flat on its face.
“I didn’t get to those files before I left last night,” Cheryl said as soon as Gerri left. “Can it wait till this afternoon?”
“Kylie and I are bouncing all over the city today. How about after five? And maybe dinner after that?”
“Good morning,” said a familiar baritone voice before she could answer. It was Matt Smith, star of my soap opera fantasies. “Sorry I can’t join you. I’m just grabbing a coffee. Captain Cates’s email keeps crashing, and she wants it fixed first thing. How’d it go last night?”
“Fantastic,” Cheryl said. “It was everything you said it would be.”
“Actually, I was asking Zach,” Matt said. “How did your barhopping go?”
“We got a lead,” I said. “It looks like somebody—make that two somebodies—picked Parker-Steele up in a black SUV exactly in that spot where you said she dropped off the radar.”
“Good show. That explains her quick trip to the Fifty-Ninth Street Bridge. I have her cell records. I’ll check if anyone she called in the past six months owns a black SUV. I’ll get on it as soon as I solve the captain’s email issue. Still looking for the source of the choke pear.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“Don’t thank me, mate. It’s a pleasure to be on the team with you. As for you, Doctor,” he said to Cheryl, “pop round my office at lunch. We can grab a bite, and you can fill me in on last night.”
“Will do,” she said.
I waited for Matt to go out the front door. “So, Doctor,” I said, “what went so fantastic for you last night?”
“The play. I told you I was taking my parents to the theater for their anniversary. It’s a new Off Broadway play that Matt recommended.”
“Sorry. I’ve been busy. I guess I forgot. Glad it went well.”
“Better than well. Matt is friends with the playwright. He arranged for me to take Mom and Dad backstage to meet him. Oh, my God, they flipped.”
“Sounds…fantastic.”
“Zach, you seem very out of it. What’s going on with you, anyway?”
“It’s personal,” I said.
“Do you want to tell me what it is?”
“Are you asking me as a shrink or as a friend?”
“Either way, it will stay between the two of us. What’s bothering you?”
For starters, you’re popping round Matt’s office for lunch. But, of course, I couldn’t say that. “It’s Spence,” I said, groping for something she would buy. “He’s become addicted to painkillers, and it’s affecting Kylie’s reliability.”
“It’s obviously affecting you too.”
“Well, he’s my partner’s husband. What happens to them affects me.”
“Is that all?” she asked.
“That’s all that’s bothering me,” I said. “Nothing more.”
Cheryl rubbed her chin and nodded thoughtfully. “You, Detective Jordan,” she said, “are delightfully full of shit. I just have one question—are you lying to me as a shrink or as a friend?”
Busted. I laughed out loud. “Both. And yet neither of you appear to be buying it.”
“Zach, I don’t know what’s bothering you,” she said, getting up from the table. “But even if I did, I wouldn’t tell you. It works better if you figure it out on your own. Then I can help you deal with it. I’ve got to run. And yes, I’d love to have dinner tonight. If you want, we can pick this up then.”
She left, and I sat there for another minute, sipping the dregs of my coffee. Then I got up and went to the front of the diner. Gerri was behind the register. She didn’t say a word. She just frowned.
“What’s on your mind, Gerri?” I said.
“Nothing.”
“You seem judgmentally silent this morning.”
“You know me,” she said. “I have nothing but respect for personal boundaries.”
“Since when?”
“Sweetheart, if you really want to know what I think, you’ll ask me.”
“Okay, Gerri. I’m asking. What do you think?”
“You sure you want to know?” she asked, toying with me.
I knew I’d regret it, but she’d tell me sooner or later anyway. “Feel free,” I said.
“No questions asked,” she said. “I’m just going to speak my mind. No discussion. I don’t want to join the debating society.”
“Fine. No questions. Just tell me what you think.”
She stood up as tall as she could, which is still a foot shorter than me, and stared right into my eyes. “I think you should get your head out of your ass.”
“Anything else?” I said.
“Yeah. A buck fifty for the coffee.”
Chapter 30
It was only 6:45 when I got to the office, but Kylie was already at her desk.
“Good afternoon, Detective,” she said. “Nice of you to stroll in.”
“I’m guessing by your attempt at comic banter that you and Spence had a pleasant morning,” I said.
“I was out the door before he woke up. It doesn’t get any more pleasant than that,” she said. “Cates is waiting on us for an update.”
It took us ten minutes to bring Captain Cates up to speed on Evelyn. She interrupted us just twice. The first time was when we told her how both of Evelyn’s computers had conveniently disappeared.
“And the doorman definitely saw Sykes walk out of the building with Evelyn’s laptop?” she said.
“Technically he only saw her with a carrying case,” I said, “but she gave him a hundred bucks to disremembe
r what he saw.”
“Another clear-cut case of obstruction of justice that won’t survive our dumbass justice system,” Cates said.
Her second comment came when we told her that Joe Romeo saw Evelyn get into a black SUV with two people on Friday night.
“So you think we have two Hazmat killers?” she said.
“The Hollywood on the Hudson killer had an accomplice,” Kylie said. “Considering that Hazmat has some heavy bodies to lug around, we wouldn’t be surprised if he had one too.”
“You two pinpointed the spot where Evelyn Parker-Steele was abducted,” Cates said, “and you found an eyewitness who saw her willingly get into a black SUV with at least two people inside. You came up with more viable information in twenty-four hours than Donovan and Boyle figured out in four months.”
“Don’t give us too much credit,” Kylie said. “Those guys were nice enough to set the bar pretty low. The murder books they put together on the first three homicides are more like pamphlets. There’s nothing to go on. Zach and I thought it would help if we backtracked on some of their investigation.”
“If we can figure out where the other three victims went missing from, we might find a witness who can give us a better description of the car or the perps,” I said. “We’re going to start with the second victim, Sebastian Catt. He lived right around here—Eighty-Fourth and York.”
“What’s his story?” Cates asked.
“We don’t have anything new on him yet,” I said. “Just what’s in Donovan and Boyle’s pathetic little file.”
“I’ll be honest with you,” Cates said. “I’m so caught up in all the political bullshit that I haven’t had time to read any of the files—as skinny as they might be.”
Kylie looked surprised. “Political bullshit?” she said. “First I’ve heard about it. Thank you for sparing us, Captain.”
Cates cracked a smile. “And thank you for the laugh, Detective. With the mayor and the PC breathing down my neck, it very well may be my last. Tell me what you have on Sebastian Catt.”
“He was a ‘fashion photographer,’” Kylie said, using air quotes.
Cates knows cop-speak when she hears it, and she shook her head in disgust. “And who did he like to photograph? Little boys? Little girls?”