Drake eyed the man’s pocket. He didn’t need the typed page, not really. All he needed was the information in the article. And now he had it. What it all meant, however, he wasn’t completely sure.
Not yet, anyway.
Drake nodded.
“Thanks. Appreciate it,” he said curtly.
The man tilted his head to one side, hair falling over his left eye.
“It wasn’t a gift, Drake. It was a trade. And remember, you owe me now.”
And with that, the man stood and slid out of the booth.
“Go home Drake, get some rest. You look like shit.”
That’s the second time tonight someone’s told me that.
Drake watched him go and pounded the last of his drink. No sooner had the bell above the door stopped chiming did another sound fill the Diner.
The sound of Drake’s cell phone ringing.
He picked it up.
“Drake,” he said, hoping that his voice didn’t come off half as tired as he felt.
It’s Chase, telling me to come back, that Tim isn’t their guy. That she needs my help again.
But it was a male voice that answered.
“Detective Drake? I think it’s about time you come and see me.”
“What? Who is this?”
“It’s Kenneth Smith… and I think we should have a drink tonight. What do you say?”
Chapter 53
When Chase opened the door to the interrogation room, she felt oddly calm, as if a weight had been lifted off her shoulders.
She hadn’t meant to snap at Drake the way she had, but the pressure from Sergeant Rhodes and Drake… well, Drake being Drake, had pushed her over the edge.
But none of that mattered, she realized. What mattered is that she had a suspect to interrogate. And armed with the additional information that Officer Dunbar had provided her right before Drake had burst into the interrogation room, and the high school yearbook, she felt more than confident that Tim Jenkins was involved in both NYC murders.
So what if he “said” he didn’t have a passport.
Everything else pointed at him.
And he very much fit the profile.
“Tim, I’m—”
“I didn’t do it!” Tim yelled.
“Relax, Tim. You aren’t under arrest. I just want to ask you a few questions. I apologize for my partner’s outburst earlier; it was uncalled for. And, as I mentioned to you in the car on the way over here, you are entitled to a lawyer, and you can ask for one at any point during this interview. Do you understand?”
Tim nodded.
“I just want to go home,” he pleaded. “This is just a fucked up misunderstanding. There was someone in my house, and he was standing over me, his hands…” he shuddered and for a split second, she almost believed him. “And he brought the container and syringe with him. I swear, on my mother’s grave.”
Chase found the word choice curious considering what Drake had been shouting when he had burst into the room.
“Is she… alive?” she asked.
Tim shook his head.
“No, she died last year. Wh—what does that have to do with anything?”
Chase shrugged.
“Doesn’t matter. I want to ask you a few questions about your relationship with Neil Pritchard and Thomas Smith. Let’s start small. Did you know them?”
Tim crossed his arms over his chest.
“Yeah, I knew them both,” his eyes flicked to the high school yearbook that Chase had set down on the table. “I went to school with them.”
Chase nodded.
“And what happened? They went on to illustrious careers while you went on to what… work at a minimum wage job at the Gardens?”
“No, not minimum wage. And I don’t really know what they went on to do.”
This wasn’t true, and they both knew it.
“Tim, if you’re going to lie about something as small as this, then we are going to have a problem here.”
Tim pressed his lips together petulantly for a moment, then slumped in his chair.
“Fine. I know what they did for a living—shit, everyone does. It was all over the papers. The Butterfly Killer and all that. Do I feel bad? No. Maybe for Neil, but not for Thomas.”
“Why? Because he ended up with your high school sweetheart? With Clarissa?”
Tim glared daggers at her and Chase responded by opening the yearbook. She spun it around so that he could see.
“What? You thought I didn’t know?” she pointed at the photograph of a much younger version of Tim and a Clarissa who looked nearly identical, wrapped in a tight embrace, both wearing formal attire. “It’s all in here, Tim. You loved her, and she got away. Maybe she didn’t like the fact that you were working minimum wage, while Thomas was a junior partner in one of the most powerful law firms in the city. Huh, one that his dad and brother own. Was that it? Was that why she left?”
Tim scowled at her, his face turning a deep crimson.
“It’s not minimum wage,” he spat, and Chase knew that she had touched a nerve. “And that’s not why she left me.”
“Is it because you live in a townhouse in the Bronx? Is that why? Because I’ve been to Clarissa’s home. It’s ridiculous—a mansion. Seriously, you should see it.”
Tim leered.
“Oh, I know, I’ve seen it.”
Chase made a hmph sound.
“Really? That’s interesting because you told me a minute ago that you haven’t seen Thomas in years.”
“I haven’t.”
Okay, okay, I see where this is going.
“C’mon now, Tim. You want me to believe that you—you, working as a common gardener—could get with Clarissa? Could make her cheat on Thomas? Gimme a break.”
Tim turned red again and he leaned forward. His breath was coming out his nostrils in short bursts.
“You wanna know what happened? Well, maybe you should talk to Thomas bastard of a brother Wes, or maybe the godfather, Ken. Did you know he was planning to run for mayor?”
Chase nodded.
“Yeah, I knew that.”
Tim seemed surprised by this, but then continued as if she hadn’t offered a reply.
“Well, then you must know that he has been going around town spreading his money around, trying to clean up the filth that Thomas had piled on top of the Smith name. I bet you didn’t know that, did you?”
Chase recalled what Detective Simmons had told him about the teacher with the brand new Audi. She had her suspicions that Ken Smith was doing exactly as Tim suggested, but decided to keep this information close to her chest.
“Go on.”
“Well I hadn’t spoken to Neil for years, but he contacted me a few months ago. Told me he had a hookup with a high-priced call girl. Wanted me to get in on the action, said it would be like old times. I wasn’t interested, but went along with it—the Butterfly Gardens were strapped and I thought maybe I could ask him to make a donation. But when I found out that Thomas was seeing this call girl, too? I—I couldn’t believe it. I mean, he had Clarissa, what more does a man need?”
“So you killed him for cheating on her? Your first love?”
Tim laughed, a high and tight sound.
“I didn’t kill anyone. But I followed Thomas, just to make sure that Neil wasn’t just talking out of his ass like he used to do as a kid. And I saw him. Thomas was seeing that call girl—Veronica, I think her name was—once a week. Sometimes more. I did some more digging and found out that he would tell Clarissa that he was going away for business and stay with Veronica for days at a time. I mean, days. Can you believe that?”
Chase nodded.
“I understand why you would be pissed.”
“She didn’t deserve that. Shit, she deserved better than Thomas. Sure, he would go to all of these events, give money to these causes, but it was all a show. Thomas wasn’t a saint, far from it. He was just a spoiled rich kid with too much money. Thought he could do whatever he wanted and get a
way with it, that daddy would just pay everyone off, make them forget. But obviously not everybody…”
A strange expression crossed Tim’s face as his sentence trailed off.
“But not you, right Tim? They can’t buy you off. And when they tried… well, that was the final straw, wasn’t it? Did you ask for money? Blackmail the Smiths to make a donation to the Gardens? What, they turn you down?”
Tim scoffed.
“I don’t want their money.”
“Then what did you do about it? About Thomas cheating on Clarissa?”
“I went to her, I went to see Clarissa. She didn’t believe me at first, but I had evidence. Photographs that even she couldn’t deny.”
Chase mulled this over for a few seconds, wondering if he was telling the truth. If he was, then Clarissa was a much better liar than she had ever thought.
And I’m supposed to be good at reading people…
“So you tried to, what? Get her to seek revenge on Thomas by propositioning her? And she rejected you? But you couldn’t hurt her, right? Because you still love her.”
Tim frowned deeply.
There was that raw nerve again. He did love her.
“So you went after him instead. Threatened him. Eventually things went wrong, and you ended up killing him.”
Tim shook his head emphatically.
“I told you already, I didn’t kill him. I didn’t kill anyone. I left after Clarissa told me that she was leaving him. She was going to pick Thomas Jr. up from school and just leave.”
“But she didn’t, did she?”
Tim growled.
“No, she didn’t. I got a text from her the next day saying she had changed her mind, that they were going to work things out. That wasn’t her; that wasn’t Clarissa.”
“So what happened?”
Tim leaned back in his chair.
“I’ll tell you what happened. That creepy housekeeper showed up at my doorstep the next day with an envelope full of cash—twenty grand, can you believe it? He said I just had to keep my mouth shut, and I could keep it. No strings attached.”
“But you refused.”
Tim nodded.
“Damn right I refused; as I said, Clarissa deserved better.”
“She deserved you?”
He shrugged.
“It doesn’t matter. Anyways, I didn’t take the money and a week later I get a letter from the court. The Butterfly Gardens were being sued by SSJ, and I was being held personally liable for some bullshit charge about breaking some law about exotic plants. Gimme a fucking break. It was Ken Smith again, waving his fucking wallet around, trying to keep his son’s infidelity a secret, trying once again to clean up his mess. The impish maid came by, said that it could all go away if I just took the money.” He clenched his jaw. “I refused.”
The room fell silent, and Chase took the time to process everything that Tim had said. It sounded reasonable, even seemed to make sense based on everything that she knew about this case. And yet it wasn’t the entire truth, she knew that too.
What else is he hiding?
“Can I go now?” Tim asked.
“No, you can’t.”
Tim threw his hands up.
“I’ve told you everything. You should be out there, searching for whoever broke into my house. That’s your killer, not me!”
“You know what, Tim? I don’t think you’ve told me everything.”
Tim raised an eyebrow, silently urging Chase to continue.
“You haven’t told me about the butterflies.”
Something dark flashed across his face. Chase opened the yearbook and flipped through the pages, stopping when she reached the photograph of Tim, Neil, Chris and Thomas, their mouths wide in either joy or fury. Then she lowered her finger to the only boy that they had yet to identify, the one with the long arms hanging at his sides, the one with the frown.
“Who’s this, Tim? Who’s this boy?”
Tim’s face went completely dark.
“I’ve said enough.”
“Tim, tell me who this is.”
“I’ve said enough!” he bellowed. “And now I want my lawyer.”
Chapter 54
Unlike his late son, Ken Smith didn’t live on an estate at the outskirts of the city. Instead, he lived in a high-rise in downtown Manhattan. As Drake entered the building, a security guard approached, confirmed his name, and then asked him to put his gun in the box along with any other weapons.
Drake reluctantly put Chase’s gun in the bin and then made his way with escort to the elevator. Inside, the man pushed the ‘P’ at the top, then flashed his keycard to make the elevator ascend.
Drake, tired, slightly drunk, looked around until his eyes fell on the camera located in the upper left-hand corner of the chrome elevator. For some reason, he winked at it.
When the elevator came to a stop on the top floor, the security guard held the door for him and then the man, a portly fellow with eyebrows that exactly matched his mustache both in color and size, followed him out.
Not much could startle Drake after what he had seen during his tenure as an NYPD detective, but Ken Smith’s apartment rendered him speechless.
It was like nothing he had ever seen; from the elevator, the entire floor opened up, open concept to a new extreme. He could see a sitting room off to one side, complete with wall to ceiling bookshelves, a fireplace, and furniture that looked as if it might have been on loan from the Louvre. There was a kitchen with stainless steel appliances, high gloss white cabinets, and a fridge that looked large enough to contain Drake’s entire apartment.
The soft sound of a waterfall came from a backlit fountain to his right, which was flanked by glass cabinets that seemed to contain relics of some sort: an antique gun, a yellowed parchment of paper, an ancient-looking clock.
“That’ll be all, Stewart,” a voice called from the sitting room. “Thank you.”
The man with the mustache replied, “Are you sure, Mr. Smith?”
The reply was calm and relaxed. Mellow, even.
“I’m sure. I have Raul to help serve my guest.”
Raul? Raul’s here?
Drake’s eyes whipped around, trying to find the source of the voice. It took him a while, but he eventually spotted a thin trail of smoke drifting upward from one of the chairs in the sitting room, the back to him.
“Have a nice night, Mr. Smith,” the security guard said as the elevator doors closed.
When the whirr of the metal box faded, Ken Smith stood and turned to face Drake.
He was tall, with a shock of white hair and matching stubble that stood out on his tanned skin. Drake thought he looked to be in his late-fifties, but based on the age of his late son, he expected that the man’s actual age might be closer to seventy. Despite the hour, he was wearing a neatly pressed white shirt, sans tie, and navy blue slacks that ended in coffee-colored loafers.
“Welcome, Detective Drake,” Ken Smith said, opening his arms in a friendly gesture. “I’m glad that you could make it.”
Drake grumbled something of a hello as Ken brought a cigar to his lips and puffed.
“I promised you a drink? What would you like?” he asked, turning his attention to the kitchen. “Raul? Please get our guest a…” he looked expectantly at Drake.
“Johnny Red,” he said.
Ken chuckled.
“I’m sorry, but my bar is not fully stocked. I do, however, have a supply of Johnny Walker Blue. Would this suit you just as well?”
Drake said it would do.
“Then as Raul prepares your drink—neat, I presume?”
“Yes.”
“Good, then we shall palaver.”
Drake made a face, realizing that he had entered another world.
Palaver?
“Please, take a seat,” Ken said, indicating the chair opposite the one he had been sitting.
Drake did, and as soon as his ass hit the plush, olive-colored material, he let out an audible sigh.
&nb
sp; It was like sitting on a marshmallow.
Ken laughed briefly, a pleasant, friendly sound.
“There’s nothing quite like it after a long day of work. Believe me, I make the same noise every single night.”
Raul suddenly appeared, wearing a white shirt with a black bow-tie, a rock glass with three fingers of golden liquid at the bottom in hand.
Drake squinted up at the man, trying to get a read on him. Raul gave away nothing; he was as stone-faced as he had been while driving the Rover, and as quiet as he had been at the station.
“Raul has been with our family for a long time,” Ken said, puffing on his cigar again. “He is more than our servant; he is part of our family.”
Raul nodded, and then placed the glass on the table beside Drake.
“Your errand boy? Bringing cash to people all over the city?” Drake said.
Ken smiled.
“Maybe. Sometimes. He does what we ask of him, and is compensated accordingly.”
Drake stared at the man across from him. He had seen photographs of Ken Smith, and while he looked pretty much the same in real life, his attitude and demeanor were different.
In the photographs, he had given off an air of authority, in a utilitarian way, which was almost to be expected as the lead ‘Smith’ in SSJ. But this version of Ken Smith was different. He was calm, relaxed, unfazed. Friendly, even.
And it was off-putting to Drake. He was a New York City detective investigating the death of his son in the presence of the mustachioed servant who he had questioned less than twenty-four hours ago.
No one should be this calm.
Especially not Ken Smith.
“Cohiba Behike 56,” Ken said suddenly.
“Excuse me?”
Ken smiled again and held up the cigar.
“I’m sorry, please excuse my lack of manners. It has, after all, been a long week. Would you like a cigar? So long as you don’t tell, of course—they are Cuban.”
Drake shook his head and frowned.
No, this man really wasn’t afraid of anything.
“Suit yourself, but before we get started, I suggest you try your beverage.”
Detective Damien Drake series Box Set 1 Page 23