Sergeant Rhodes sighed and removed his spectacles before rubbing the red indentations on the sides of his nose with index finger and thumb. He set his glasses down on the desk and leveled his eyes at Chase.
“Fine. But I want it to be discrete, you got that? And no one is to go near any member of the Smith family. Clear?”
Chase nodded.
“Got it.”
“And get someone on this Tim Jenkins right away; the last thing we need is another murder on our hands. And Chase, get the media off my back. Set up a conference for tomorrow morning.”
Chase screwed up her face.
“To tell them what?”
Rhodes threw up his hands.
“I don’t know, just get them off my back! And if you wear that outfit for the conference, I don’t care what HR says, you’re done. Now both of you get the hell out of my office!”
Chapter 38
An hour later, Drake found himself back in the conference room, his eyes fading in and out of focus as he stared at the photographs on the board.
Chase had done a good job piecing things together, but he couldn’t help but think that there was something that they were missing, something big. Something that might break this case.
Three victims, one of whom lived in a different country, two who had just rekindled a two-decade stale friendship, a hooker, an impish housekeeper with envelopes of cash and a fucking butterfly of all things…
Drake was reminded of a similar board that Clay had set up when they were trying to catch the Skeleton King. Only then it had been seven murders, not three, and the victims were castaways rather than New York’s most affluent.
Still, there was something similar about them. For one, the Skeleton Killer had a specific MO, as did the Butterfly Killer.
The door to the conference opened and Drake turned to see Chase enter. She was wearing a dark skirt and a cream-colored blouse buttoned nearly to her throat.
“I thought I might find you in here. Did you go interview Veronica yet?”
Drake shook his head.
“No; I’m letting her stew. I told Frank that when he picks up Raul to make sure he sneaks him in through the back way, but to make sure that Veronica sees him. She was pretty tight-lipped back in her apartment; maybe seeing Raul might loosen them up. I considered asking Frank to cuff Raul once he was inside the station, but if Rhodes found out, he’d take a sprinkler shit.”
Chase smirked, and he could see in her eye that she thought bringing Raul in and parading him for Veronica might help her remember Thomas Smith.
“Detective Gainsford is stationed outside Tim Jenkins’s house on explicit orders not to interact with him if spotted. I said that we would relieve him tonight at ten.”
Drake raised an eyebrow, but resisted commenting. Watching a man’s house was a one-person job. This felt suspiciously like she wanted to babysit him. And it also meant that it wasn’t likely that he would be getting any “Key lime” pie tonight.
Or Johnny Red.
“What are we going to do in the meantime? I’m going blind staring at this board here.”
Chase smiled.
“What? What is it?” Drake asked.
She threw a pile of papers on the desk and they slid over to Drake. He caught them before they fell to the floor.
“My guy in records came through: Thomas’s juvi records. And they are worse than we thought. Much worse.”
Drake grabbed the papers and started reading.
“No kidding,” he said.
The first line read Thomas Alexander Smith - Juvenile Criminal Record. What followed was several pages of lists of offenses and the penalties.
“Three pages?” he asked with surprise.
Chase nodded eagerly.
“Go on, have a read—it gets better.”
Drake turned his attention to the first page again.
The first crime listed was Grand Theft Auto.
Drake whistled.
“Wow. Really? This is no kid forgetting to pay for a candy bar.”
“Nope,” Chase replied with an air of smugness. “Keep going.”
Three years in juvenile detention, reduced to six months, released after one month for good behavior.
Thomas was only fourteen at the time.
His eyes drifted to the next indictment.
Theft under $1000; three months’ probation, $10,000 dollar fine, 40 hours of community service.
The third crime was Assault in the Third Degree, for which Thomas paid another hefty fine and was given one hundred hours of community service.
Drake looked up and rubbed his eyes. Squinting at the plain black text was making him a little nauseous.
“Yep,” Chase said before Drake even asked a question. “They’re all like that. Hefty fine, community service. Looks like Daddy had to shell out some cash to keep our angel Thomas Alexander Smith out of prison.”
Drake tapped the corner of the page.
“Why didn’t any of this come up in our background search? Juvi records are sealed, but there must have been something about this in a newspaper article, no? I mean, they can’t publish his name, but there are other ways of subtly hinting at it, which would be of interest, especially given Ken Smith’s prominence in the community.”
Chase shook her head.
“Not one. Not a single article about the crimes, let alone the perpetrators—I had Dunbar double-check after I received the file. I’m beginning to think that Ken Smith’s strategic donations might include some very specific editors over at the Times. The way I figure it, if you can pay them to print whatever you want, you can pay them to keep whatever you want out of print.”
Don’t I know it, Drake thought.
“And,” Chase continued, “this was more than twenty years ago. No blogs or vlogs back then.”
Drake raised an eyebrow.
“I’ve heard of blogs, but vlogs?”
“Video blogs.”
“Ah.”
Chase moved around to Drake’s side of the desk.
“Take a closer look at the auto theft.”
Drake did.
Nothing jumped out at him.
“The co-defendant.”
It took Drake a second to find the line, and when he did, he whistled.
“Wow.”
Chase’s smile grew.
“Yep. Thomas and Neil—both of them stole the car. Looks like the two rich boys liked to get into a little trouble way back yonder.”
Drake leaned back in his chair.
“No kidding,” he said as he reached over and grabbed the high school yearbook again. He opened it to the page with the photograph of Thomas and Neil and the three other boys, which had been marked with a sticky note. When he had first seen the photo, he had only seen youthful glee in their eyes, their mouths spread wide in laughter. But now, given what he knew about Thomas and his youth, his perspective had changed.
No longer did they look happy, jubilant. Now they looked… different. They could be laughing, sure, but it didn’t have to be with joy. It could be something else.
“You think that these boys pissed someone off all those years ago, and whoever it was is just getting around to extracting their revenge now? After all this time?”
Chase shrugged.
“I thought about it. I mean, Dunbar can’t find a recent connection between Chris and Neil and Thomas—he’s still working on Tim. But I doubt they were all chumming about in a ritzy club together. As for someone with a vendetta? I managed to pull up the case files for the most egregious of Thomas’s indictments… they are readily available, only the juvi’s names are censored. The car they stole belonged to a school teacher, and he was trying to have the charges thrown out. The theft? Macy’s. Shit, everyone steals from Macy’s. And the assault was from Thomas throwing a punch at a bouncer who wouldn’t let him into a club because he was seven years underage. The guy is in his sixties now—and he’s a minister.”
Drake thought about this for a moment, h
er previous comment about Ken Smith paying off an editor still at the forefront of his mind.
“You know what? Maybe it’s not the crimes that Thomas was arrested for, but for ones he wasn’t.”
Chase clucked her tongue.
“That’s what I was thinking, too. But how the hell can we find out about a crime that was never reported? Never filed? No arrest made? Maybe today we can do a computer search for any notes on Thomas or Neil, but twenty years ago? Impossible.”
Drake looked up at Chase.
“Not impossible. We just have to ask one of the boys.”
Chase looked dubious, and Drake knew what she was thinking.
Thomas was dead, so were Neil and Chris. And they had decided to keep their distance from Tim Jenkins for the time being.
But he wasn’t interested in any of them.
He leaned forward suddenly, and his finger landed directly on the face of the lanky boy half cut off by the edge of the photo, his thin lips pulled down into a deep frown.
“This boy… I bet he can tell us what we want to know. If we can ever find out who the fuck he is.”
One look at her face was enough to tell him that she was skeptical.
“If he isn’t just some random lurker, which we can’t tell. I have Dunbar on it, just in case. Speaking of which,” she said as she pulled out another sheet of paper from the folder in front of her.
“More gifts?”
“Dunbar came through again. A list of the teachers that taught the boys in high school. At first, I thought that maybe the teacher whose car they had stolen would be on it, but no such luck. He didn’t work in the same district. Anyway, most are dead or long retired. I had Detective Simmons make some calls—apparently, he’s good with the elderly—and three of them remember the boys. He and Detective Yasiv are headed out to speak to them now.”
“And Dunbar?”
“He’s still working on the Jenkins connection. He’s gonna call me as soon as he knows.”
Drake spun in his chair and started adding the new information—the teacher, the mystery boy with the long arms and longer face, the bouncer that Thomas had clocked—to the board.
When he was done, he pointed a finger at the psychiatrist Dr. Mark Kruk.
“What about him? Anyone speak to him?”
Chase shook her head.
“You were supposed to, remember? Before you went off visiting hookers and getting punched in the head.”
Drake chuckled and then winced as he was reminded of his sore ribs and swollen face.
“It’s a waste of time, anyway. He’s not going to reveal you any patient information.”
Drake shrugged, remembering how he had loathed the idea of speaking to another psychiatrist when Chase had first suggested it.
But now Dr. Mark Kruk looked like the last person they hadn’t interviewed yet.
It might be worth a shot.
For several moments, both of them just stared at the board without speaking.
“Looks like a spider web,” Chase finally said.
“More like an immature chrysalis,” Drake said.
Chase frowned and was about to say something when her phone buzzed and she answered it. After a few short sentences, she hung up and turned to Drake.
“That was Detective Gainsford. He’s on his way in with Raul now. We should head to the interrogation room, get ready. Make sure Veronica sees him.”
Drake nodded.
“Yeah, you head over. I doubt that she’ll be too happy to see me first. Might be good if you can smooth things over, make her feel more comfortable. Maybe put that little number you had on before?”
Chase punched him on the shoulder, and he winced when the impact made his side flare again.
“You’ve got five minutes.”
“Five minutes,” Drake agreed. When the door closed behind her, he took his cell phone out of his pocket and made a call of his own.
Chapter 39
“Raul, I’m trying hard here, trying to understand why you were taking money to a hooker in Clinton Hill. Money that you received from Weston Smith,” Chase said, leaning over her desk.
Raul said nothing, just stared across at Chase with his small, dark eyes.
Chase sighed.
“I don’t understand. You come here on your own volition, without representation even though we both know that all you had to do is whistle and Weston would be here. Why? To just sit here and say nothing?”
Still nothing. Not a flash of anger, sadness, frustration. Nothing. The man’s affect was slightly disturbing. Chase decided to push a little harder, try to evoke a reaction in him.
“Why were you paying the prostitute, Raul? Did you rough her up a little last time? Choke her maybe?”
Not even a flicker in the man’s dark eyes.
“No? Maybe Clarissa is more your type, with her big—”
“That’s enough!” the man shouted suddenly.
The outburst was so sudden that Chase recoiled in surprise.
So there’s the button, she thought. But instead of pushing it, she leaned back in her chair and studied the man. He was small in stature, but had a presence that she hadn’t truly appreciated when they had first met back at the Smith estate. Back then, she had thought that it would take a large man to open the massive oak doors, and was surprised that instead it had been Raul.
Now Chase was beginning to think that Raul was “bigger” than she had first thought, and made a mental note for Dunbar to look into Raul as well as Tim Jenkins.
Why are you here? Guilt? Duty? Remorse?
Chase massaged her forehead.
“You can leave. At any time, you can leave, Raul. You’re not under arrest, you’re not being held or detained. This is just a conversation. A conversation between two people who want to find out who killed Thomas Smith. Do you think you can help me with that?”
Raul didn’t move; he didn’t so much as twitch his coarse mustache. Any anger she had drawn out of him for speaking ill of Clarissa had faded as quickly as it had come. And worse, it seemed to have transferred to her.
Why is everyone involved in this case dead set on making it as difficult as possible to solve? What the hell is everyone hiding?
***
Drake pressed the bag of peas he had stolen from the staff freezer to the side of his head. He inhaled sharply, but the numbing sensation that followed was greatly appreciated.
“This is what I get, trying to do the right thing,” he grumbled.
Veronica scoffed.
“I know you were seeing Thomas Alexander Smith. I know because we saw your name in his cell phone,” Drake stared intently at the woman as he spoke, seeing if she would give anything away.
Veronica shook her head and rolled her eyes, but kept her lips tightly closed.
“I also think that you were seeing Neil Benjamin Pritchard.”
Was that a twitch? Did she cut her breath short?
“It doesn’t look good, Veronica. Doesn’t look good for you at all. Two of your wealthy clients are dead, and you accepting a bribe from one of their rich families to keep silent. In addition to solicitation, we can book you on obstruction of justice, and maybe accessory after the fact. That’s up to 15 years in prison, my dear.”
Veronica sneered at this.
“That envelope of cash won’t do you much good in prison. You’ll still be turning tricks in prison, but it won’t be in a giant bed with red drapes, and your clients will have names like Sadie Mae and Squeaky Fromme and not Blake and Finn, let me tell you.”
Veronica was unfazed.
“Three murders, Veronica. Murders. Thomas, Neil, and Chris. Are their lives worth less than the cash that Raul slipped you?”
Veronica pursed her lips, then crossed her arms over her ridiculous Frozen nightgown.
“Who?”
Drake stared.
He suddenly stood, unable to look at Veronica’s smug expression for any longer. Without another word, he stormed out of the room. Then he pre
ssed his back against the wall and closed his eyes.
Just one drink. I’ll head to my car and grab the miniature that I stashed in the glovebox and down it. Just one.
Drake opened his eyes and turned, and nearly stumbled when he realized that Chase was standing there, staring at him.
“It’s probably thawed by now,” she said.
Drake’s face twisted in confusion.
“What?”
She nodded at his bag of peas in his hand. Drake growled and threw them into a trash bin by the end of the hall.
It clanged loudly and threatened to topple, but after an obnoxious whu-whu-whu-whu rocking sound, it settled.
“You getting anywhere with Indian Oddjob?”
Chase squinted in response to the obscure reference, and the racist nature of the remark, but then shook her head.
“He hasn’t said anything. Literally nothing—aside from protecting Clarissa. I mean, why even come down here if you aren’t going to speak? What’s the point?”
Drake ground his molars so hard that he felt a fine powder rain down on his tongue.
Chase was right. None of this made sense. Drake suddenly found himself in the alley again, nursing his wounds, shouting at the dumb ass beat cop to move his car, when the black Range Rover drove by.
Why was the Rover there? Why would Raul still be hanging around?
Like a flash of lightning, an idea came. Chase must have seen a change in his face, because she suddenly became alarmed.
“What? What is it?”
“I want to try something, okay? You said you play poker—”
“—Internet poker.”
“Yeah, well can you read people?”
Chase grinned.
“Most definitely,” she replied.
“Okay, good. So here’s what I’m going to do,” Drake said, and then told her of his plan.
***
“That’s it, Raul. You don’t want to talk, so there’s really no point of either of us wasting our time,” Drake said. As expected, the man didn’t so much as bat an eye. “No, seriously. I’ll walk you out. No more questions. It’s not as if you would answer them anyway.”
Detective Damien Drake series Box Set 1 Page 17