Eye of the Witch (Paranormal Detective Mystery series, book 2)

by Dana E. Donovan

Eye of the Witch

  © Dana E. Donovan 2006, 2017

  Author's notes: This book is based entirely on fiction and its story line derived solely from the imagination of its author. No characters, places or incidents in this book are real. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, places, events or locales is entirely coincidental. No part of this publication may be copied or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy or otherwise, without the express written permission of the author or author’s agent.

  Table of Contents:

  CHAPTER 01

  CHAPTER 02

  CHAPTER 03

  CHAPTER 04

  CHAPTER 05

  CHAPTER 06

  CHAPTER 07

  CHAPTER 08

  CHAPTER 09

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  One

  I had that dream again, the one where Doctor Lowell has me tied to a tree and is coming at me with a knife. Only in my dream, I’m younger, much younger, like maybe by forty years.

  Lilith’s there, too, except this time not tied to the tree with me. I saw her standing on the sideline with Carlos, talking and laughing and playing with that confounded witch’s ladder. I screamed for one of them to untie a knot on the ladder. They paid no attention. They couldn’t hear me. My screams were only in my head.

  Carlos leaned in and kissed her. She pulled back and giggled. I thought to myself, that’s so unlike her. I’d never seen her giggle before. Then the two of them looked back at me and waved goodbye before the mad doctor plunged his knife into my chest.

  That’s when I woke up, dripping in sweat, my heart pounding harder than a sixty-four-year-old heart had a right to.

  In the old days, I would shrug something like that off, grab a cigarette and a shot of whiskey and then gone back to bed. But my days of smoke and whiskey seemed more distant than the young detective I left tied to that tree in my dreams. The best I could do then was get up and fix myself a grapefruit and guava smoothie, and so that’s what I did.

  As I sat sipping my concoction and thumbing through that silly string of beads I brought down from New Castle, the phone rang. I glanced at the clock on the wall. It was almost midnight. Even though my home phone didn’t have caller ID, I knew right away who it was.

  “Hello, Carlos,” I said after answering. “What do you want?”

  “Tony, hey, I didn’t wake you, did I? I mean I know how you like to stay up late watching old westerns and…. You were up, right?”

  “I was up, yes, but it’s nearly midnight. I know you didn’t call just to say hi. Is everything all right up there?”

  He grew silent. My experience told me that he had a whole ice-breaking spiel ready for me, but I derailed his train of thought. It was selfish of me, really. I owed him more than that.

  We hadn’t talked for a while, not since I moved away. It all came to a head after our last case together. I sort of lost it. I grew despondent and my carelessness nearly got us both killed in a car wreck. That’s when I knew I had to retire. I had been thinking about it anyway.

  My captain recommended the condominiums at Del Rio Vista. Said his mother lived there and loved it. He said it was a great place to launch the exciting second half of my life.

  What he meant was, it’s a great place to go and die. Just look at his mother. For years he sent her checks every month for room and board, and a card on Mother’s Day. Last month she slipped into a coma and passed. It took four days before anyone noticed. I suppose living at Del Rio Vista was just too much excitement for the old girl.

  In the back of my mind, I believe the captain found some relief in the news. He had to know that his mother was fading like old denim.

  But Carlos never expected I would hate it in Florida. I’m sure he hated to see me leave New Castle, but he believed it was for the best. He promised he would come down a couple of times a year to do some fishing with me. He hasn’t yet. I don’t blame him, though. Detective work is all-consuming. It’s the reason he’s still single, the reason I never married. I let him stew in silence awhile longer before finally letting him off the hook.

  “Carlos, it’s okay that you haven’t called me before now. I know you’re busy.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Sure. I’ve been busy, too.”

  “You have?”

  “You kidding? Man, what with all the biking, swimming, canoeing, golfing, shuffleboard, bingo, cocktail parties and socializing, I don’t know if I’d have had the time to talk anyway.”

  All right, so I lied to him. Truth was that I hadn’t done half those things in years. The other half I had never done at all.

  “Really?” he said.

  “Yeah, but I have time for you now. So tell me. How’ve you been? You make captain yet?”

  “Me? Come on. That’s not my gig. I’m a field guy. You know that. The minute they promote me to captain, I’m taking that retirement train straight down to Florida where I can really start enjoying life—like you.”

  “Right, like me. Well, all in good time. Don’t rush things, my friend. So tell me. You keeping busy up there?”

  I said that and he went quiet again. It’s funny how two friends can sense when something is not quite right. I thought for a moment he had detected the discontent in my voice, but I wasn’t sure. Carlos Rodriquez and I had worked together for nearly thirty years, and in that time we both learned more about the other than either intentionally divulged. I assumed he was simply feeling the void in my words, but as soon as he spoke again I realized it was his misapprehensions I felt, not him feeling mine.

  “Carlos? Is something wrong?”

  “I probably shouldn’t have called you tonight. You have your life there now. It’s late. I didn’t realize. How `bout I call you back another time and we’ll—”

  “Carlos, no! Look. I’m up. You called me. There’s something going on that you thought I should know. What is it?”

  He hesitated. “I don’t….”

  “Caaaaarlos.”

  “All right. You sure? I mean, I don’t want to burden you. It’s just that….”

  “Damn it, Carlos. Spill it!”

  I heard him take a deep breath and snort it out like a bull. “Okay, I’m just looking for advice, though, that’s all.”

  “Fine. That’s all you’ll get.”

  “I have this case I’ve sort of been working on.”

  “I figured that.”

  “Yeah, but it’s not just any case. It’s a real conundrum, and if you’re not looking at it just right, it appears not much of a case at all.”

  “Maybe it’s not,” I said. “Sometimes things are what they seem.”

  “Yes, but if there’s one thing I learned working with you, it’s that you’ve got to trust your instincts, and my gut instincts tells me there’s something going on here. Something big.”

  “All right, wait a minute.” I set the phone down on the kitchen table and poured another glass of grapefruit and guava. I took a sip, smacking my lips from the tartness before returning the pitcher to the fridge. As I put the phone back to my ear, I heard Carlos rambling on without pausing between breaths.

  “Carlos!” I said. I think I was laughing. “Carlos, slow down. I told you to wait a minute. I was getting something to drink. Start over.”

  “What? You didn’t hear what I said?”

  “Not a word. Now, start from the beginning, and slow down. I think half of what you said was in Spanish, anyway.”

  “Tony.” He
sounded frustrated. “There’s been a number of suicides in New Castle lately.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes, and all very suspicious.”

  “You think they weren’t suicides?”

  “I can’t see it. The last one we had in New Castle was Gordon Walsh, who hung himself in our jail cell the night––”

  “Yes, I remember Gordon. Damn it. How could I forget? I’m the reason he—”

  “Whoa, Tony, easy. I’m sorry. I didn’t…What I meant was, before Gordon, the last suicide in New Castle was back in ’52. Now we have three in as many weeks, all seemingly unrelated.”

  “School kids?”

  “No. Adults. All women.”

  “Are you thinking serial?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “Who were they?”

  “The first was a lawyer with Hartman, Pierce and Petruzelli—a real sharp one, Tony, with the whole package, beautiful, bold and bodacious. She had just been named full partner in the firm.”

  “Sounds like she had everything to live for.”

  “Yeah, sounds like. I mean definitely not your typical Prozac type.”

  Typical? I tried to visualize what the typical suicidal type might look like, so that I might put a face to the person Carlos described. I had to conclude there probably wasn’t any one image to attach to such a stereotype. What we see on the outside rarely mirrors the person we find on the inside after one has committed the ultimate act of self-persecution.

  I asked Carlos about the second girl, trying to keep an open mind on the kind of person I thought I might find behind his words.

  “She was pretty,” he said. “Cuban born, like me. Not as successful as the lawyer chick, but well-liked.”

  “Well-liked? Huh.” That seemed unqualified. “Maybe not by all.”

  Carlos laughed faintly. “I suppose.”

  I asked him about the third woman. He got quiet again. I heard him take a short breath and then swallow. “Yeah, her.” he said. “You see, hers was the one that told me things were not what they seemed. She had plans that night. This woman had plans and they didn’t include killing herself.”

  “Maybe something came up at the last minute that changed her mind.”

  “No way.”

  “You’re sure of that?”

  “Yes, I am. And Tony, this woman? There’s something else you need to know about her.”

  “What?”

  “She was one of ours.”

  “A cop?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Anyone I know?”

  “You remember Karen Webber?”

  “Webber. Yeah, Travis Webber’s sister, the cop from Ipswich. We met her at Travis’ funeral.”

  “Ah-huh. And you know she transferred to New Castle, right?”

  “I heard.”

  “Yeah, well, she’s number three.”

  Now it was my turn to fall silent. I remembered Karen Webber well, a beautiful woman and a good cop. We met her at her brother’s funeral. She drove down from Ipswich to stand in uniform in the rain, unflinching as they buried Travis, still not knowing who killed him or why.

  The fog had not yet lifted the morning they found Travis slain on the front steps of the New England Institute for Research of Paranormal and Unexplained Phenomena. He had participated in group studies there for years, he and others in his workshop, all equally gifted and proficient in the psychic academia of clairvoyance, mental telepathy, bilocation and telekinesis. It was Travis’ love and dedication for his gift that kept him at the institute that night, and his gift that ultimately got him killed.

  I remembered Karen telling me they had just promoted her to detective up in Ipswich the week before. Still, she came to the wake and subsequent funeral in full dress uniform.

  I don’t believe she ever really bought the final report that Carlos and I filed when we closed the case on his murder. I don’t suppose I could blame her. The wild and bizarre story that unfolded in the months following his murder still seems hard for me to believe. It’s likely the reason Karen Webber transferred to the New Castle police department after I retired. Perhaps she hoped to uncover further clues into her brother’s death that I could not. Heaven knows there were plenty of questions left unanswered in our final report.

  So this was the Karen Webber I remembered, young, brave, spirited and dedicated–all the qualities that make for a good cop. And something else about Karen, like her brother Travis, she was no quitter. Carlos said he was sure Karen Webber didn’t commit suicide. In my heart, I agreed. That meant only one thing. Karen Webber, and possibly—probably the other two women were murdered.

  Though my thoughts had drifted to a place I thought I would never revisit, I still had Carlos on the other end of the line to reel me in. I heard him clear his throat, this after what seemed like minutes. I blinked myself back to the room where the smell of grapefruit and guava now sickened me. All I could do was imagine a cold gray New England sky, the graffiti-riddled sidewalks and the pothole-filled streets of New Castle and wish I were there.

  Carlos cleared his throat again. “Tony?”

  “I’m here,” I told him. “Check the flights coming in tomorrow morning. I’ll need a ride.”

  I hung up, though just long enough to get a dial tone. The airline had a flight leaving at seven in the morning, so I packed my bags and phoned a taxi. They say you should get to the airport a little early. I imagined six hours ought to do it. Besides, I suddenly craved a lousy cup of coffee to wash down the grapefruit and guava and figured where else was I going to find one?

  Carlos met me at Boston’s Logan in the baggage claim area where we greeted each other with a hug—sort of. I mean it wasn’t really a hug. It was one of those things where two guys are happy to see each other but they don’t want to seem too friendly in public. We somehow managed to slap each other on the back a few times without our chests or bellies ever touching. It’s a practiced art.

  I claimed my luggage and we headed out, walking the equivalent of four city blocks to get to the car. He had come in a company sedan, a typical unmarked jobber, which means that the vehicle stuck out like a sore thumb.

  Aside from the obvious police license plates, the vehicle sported two curly antennas sticking out the trunk lid, limo-tint side windows and of course, no hubcaps. To top it off, the little door over the gas cap was riveted shut, a telltale sign that the city finally converted their police cruisers to propane.

  “Nice,” I said, nodding my approval. “They moved you into a Crown Vic.”

  Our old car was an Impala that could barely get out of its own way. A gondola on wheels, Carlos called it. The State Patrol drove Crown Vics. We used to hate them for it.

  “Yeah,” said Carlos, “they weeded out the Chevys last year. I got one of the first delivered to the department.”

  “You crash it yet?” I knew he had.

  He dropped his head and opened the driver’s door. “It wasn’t my fault,” he said, and he got in without another word.

  As we drove on to New Castle, I alternated stares out the side window and the windshield, noting how nothing had changed. I mentioned this to Carlos and he smiled. “You want change? Wait till you see the new box.”

  He was talking about the police station. I knew they built a new one. Construction began a full year before I left the force—and none too soon, either. The old precinct building was in shambles, moldy, leaky and drafty. And that I nearly destroyed it with a mini tornado didn’t help matters much. But that’s another story.

  “Did they do a good job?” I asked.

  He just nodded and winked. “You’ll see.”

  And I did see. They did a great job. It wasn’t just a police station. It was an ultra-modern criminal justice center, complete with jails, courtrooms, administration offices and a state-of-the-art crime lab. It had everything a small town cop could want. Hell, it had everything a big town cop could want, too. I told Carlos if he threw in a couple of suites, a swimming pool and val
et parking, he’d have a five-star resort. He laughed, and later when he took me past the workout center complete with pool and sauna, I understood why.

  “It’s really different here, Tony. This facility serves the entire county. We all share resources now. We’re connected via multi-organizational networks to a national database in Washington D.C. From here we can pull up information on anything and anyone, from murderers and pedophiles to check forgers and deadbeat dads. And get this. Soon we’ll process for DNA matches right here. Can you believe it?”

  “No,” I said. “I can hardly understand it all. Maybe it’s a good thing I got out when I did. I mean…” I shook my head, and my loss for words overwhelmed me. Carlos’ expression melted with concern. He came up and put his arm around me.

  “You okay?”

  “I don’t know. Police work is a young man’s game these days. I don’t know why I came here. I must have been a fool to think I could help you. If you don’t mind, I should take a taxi back to the airport and—”

  “No! Absolutely not. Tony, don’t let all the sparkle and glitter discourage you. These are only tools. They mean nothing if you don’t have the know-how to use them.”

  “But that’s just it. I don’t have the know-how to use them.”

  “Yes, you do. You just don’t know it.”

  “Come again?”

  “You have it. You know what information you need and when you need it. All of this? It’s just a machine, a big calculator. I can run the calculator. All you need to know is what problems to ask it. I’ll feed them into the machine.”

  “No, I think that’s nice of you, but—”

  “Nice? Tony, this isn’t about being nice. Nice is having you up to my cottage in Rhode Island and taking you out for some of the best fishing this side of Narragansett Bay. Uh-uh, no, I’m talking about putting all of your forty-plus years of investigative experience to work behind some of twenty-first century’s finest technological advances to help solve a crime that no one here seems to even recognize has taken place.”

  “You mean that?”

  “Yes. This equipment is topnotch. Besides, I’ve already secured top-level clearance for you to work as a civilian consultant. You’re all ready to go.”

  “No. I mean you really have a cottage in Rhode Island?”

  He looked at me sheepishly. “Yeah, about that. It’s a shack, really. I was going to tell you about it.”

  I plugged his arm with a stiff punch. “Forget it.” He fell back, but caught himself on replanted footing. “Listen. Do you really believe I can help you with your case?”

  “Of course,” he said, and I have never seen a more serious look on his face before. “You’re the best I know at this game. You’re old school, but your aptitude for understanding criminal behavior is uncanny, and your deductive talents are immeasurable. I think we owe it to Karen Webber and the other women to do this.”

  “And to Travis,” I said. I put my hand out and we shook on it. “All right, then. Where do we start?”

  “My office. This way.”

  “You have an office?”

  He merely grinned.

  We started down a long hallway, past a checkpoint where they scanned me for weapons before issuing me a VIP pass.

  “It’s not really an office,” he said, as we single-filed out the elevator, stopping at another door that required him sliding an ID card through a barcode reader before opening. “We call it a think tank, though I suppose that term really means something else. Anyway, you’ll see.”

  The door opened into another hallway, this one wider and longer with a carpeted floor and acoustic-paneled ceiling that absorbed stray sounds like a recording studio.

  Along the walls were large plate glass windows etched with the emblems of the police departments working behind them. I noticed that the room designated for the New Castle PD was larger than the others. When asked why, Carlos explained that the other municipalities only share police resources at the justice center, whereas New Castle’s entire police force worked from that single location.

  “So then this is the entire NCPD now?” I asked.

  “Oh, this is only the detectives and support area,” he replied, smiling. “The uniforms still work downstairs where booking and processing takes place. There’s no need for them to go through the layers of security that we go through here. Come on, I’ll show you my workstation.”

  I followed Carlos behind the glass where he introduced me to the gang. Some I knew, old faces I had worked with for many years. Others were not so familiar. We headed to the back of the room where the best desks sat situated by the outside windows overlooking the parking lot. It wasn’t the greatest view, but it was a view, and that’s more than I had with my old desk for nearly forty years.

  Carlos sat down and motioned for me to take a seat across from him. There were no cubicles or half-walls separating his workspace from those of his coworkers. But careful placement of potted trees and furniture-styled filing cabinets, along with cushioned chairs and muted-colored carpeting, gave the room warm character and an impression of personalized space.

  I kicked back in my chair and started to prop my feet up on the desk, when Carlos shot me a look as if I might burn the place down with just the thought of it. I apologized with a simple, “Sorry,” and he dismissed it with a wave.

  A young man entered the office area. I say young because he looked like a kid to me, skinny, glasses, combed back hair and one of them pen protectors in his shirt pocket.

  Carlos acknowledged him with a nod and waved him over. The kid approached the desk and handed Carlos an envelope. He looked down at me and smiled politely. I smiled back. I noticed he wore an ID card on a chain around his neck and a detective’s badge on his belt. The ID card said his name was Spinelli, Dominic, Detective, Second Precinct, New Castle, Massachusetts. I’m sure it meant to read, Eagle Scout, 2nd class, Boy Scouts of America.

  “What’s this?” Carlos asked.

  “It just came up from evidence,” Spinelli replied. “I thought you’d want it.”

  “It came up? Or…” Carlos made little quotation marks in the air with his fingers. “It came up.”

  The kid smiled. Carlos pointed to me and then to the kid. “Tony. I want you to meet my partner, Detective, Dominic Spinelli. Dom, Detective Anthony Marcella.”

  “Retired,” I said, reaching up to shake his hand.

  His eyes lit up like a Jack-O-lantern. “Detective Marcella? Wow! What a pleasure to meet you, sir! You’re a legend around here!”

  I turned to Carlos and laughed. “Nice. You put him up to that, didn’t you?”

  “Not me, amigo. The kid read up on you. You’re like a second hobby for him.”

  “Second? What’s the first?”

  Carlos looked at Dominic and gave him a nod. I turned back to the young detective. “Well?”

  He smiled bashfully. “Actually, my hobby is the occult. I study Neo-Pagan religions, customs and traditions.”

  “Do you?”

  “Yes sir. Oh, but I don’t practice none of that. I’m Catholic by heritage. I just think the off-religions are fascinating.”

  I thought he was putting me on for a moment. I half-smiled to let him know the jig was up, but he didn’t break. And so I turned to Carlos and gave him the old highbrow. When that didn’t work, I decided to play along. “This wouldn’t have anything to do with that case Carlos and I worked on last year, would it?”

  “Would what that have anything to do with it?”

  “You know. You’re trying to get me to talk about the Surgeon Stalker case.”

  “Tony,” said Carlos, bluntly. “Dominic knows all about the case. He’s read every report ever written by every cop, inspector, paramedic, detective, Indian chief and shoeshine boy. He’s combed over every newspaper article, watched every newsreel, talked to every witness and pored over every Internet site on the subject since the story first broke. He can probably fill you in on a few details.”

  “Really?
” I turned to Spinelli and saw panic fill his eyes.

  “Oh, n…not that you need any details,” he stammered. “I’m sure you and Detective Rodriquez handled the case most expertly at the time.”

  “At the time? So, what you’re saying is that you would conduct matters differently now.”

  “No, not at all. I…I just…I mean….”

  “Relax, Dom. Detective Marcella’s playing with you. Tell him, Tony.”

  “He’s right,” I said, laughing a little. “Spinelli, tell me, son. How old are you?”

  He straightened his shoulders back. “I’m twenty-six, sir.”

  “Twenty-six, you still have time. Listen, kid, don’t make excuses. Learn to say what you mean and mean what you say. I know that sounds cliché, but it’s true. When did you make detective?”

  “A month ago, sir.”

  “A month ago?” I turned to Carlos. “And they partnered him with you?”

  Carlos nodded. “I asked for him.”

  “You did?”

  “Sure. After all those years with an old fart like you, I figured I deserved a break.”

  I picked the folder up off his desk and threw it at him. He blocked it with the reflexes of a cat. I heard Spinelli start to laugh at that, but a cutting glance from Carlos put an end to it quickly.

  “All right,” I said. “Enough horseplay. What’s in the envelope?”

  “Surveillance photos,” Spinelli replied. “Detective Webber tailed that suspect for weeks before she died. These are some of the photos she took.”

  That seemed promising. I pointed at the package. “Let’s see them.”

  Carlos opened the envelope and spilled the contents out onto the desk. There were six photos in all, two taken at night, but on different nights, and four in daylight. All were of the same man, dark-skinned—likely Hispanic, not too tall, good-looking, well-dressed, mid-to-late thirties and well built.

  The day shots showed the man coming and going from an office building, nothing unusual and always alone. The night shots, though grainy and distant, appeared to show the same man meeting someone at an outdoor café. Carlos gave the snapshots a gratuitous look before sliding them my way.

  “You don’t want to see them more closely?” I asked.

  “Don’t have to. I know who it is.”

  “Oh?”

  “That’s Ricardo Rivera. He’s a lawyer with Hartman, Pierce and Petruzelli. I believe you know him, too.”

  “Yes,” I answered, as I thumbed through the pictures. “I recognize him now. Wasn’t he a criminal defense attorney somewhere?”

  “He was, and a damn good one before the firm recruited him.”

  “So, how did he end up on the other end of Karen’s lens?”

  “To answer that, we have to know what she was working on before she died.”

  “And that was?”

  “We don’t really know, but I can guess.”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, she was supposedly working a string of warehouse burglaries down by the docks, but anyone related to that case will tell you they hadn’t seen or heard from her in weeks.”

  “So, what’s your theory?”

  Carlos scooted forward in his chair and planted his elbows on the desk. Spinelli and I both leaned in closer, understanding that he didn’t want anyone nearby to hear. “Remember I told you over the phone that Karen’s suicide made three in as many weeks?”

  “Of course.”

  “I don’t suppose it’s any coincidence that the first suicide victim was Bridget Dean, a lawyer at Hartman, Pierce and Petruzelli.”

  “Where Ricardo Rivera works.”

  “Exactly.”

  “That’s right. You mentioned that. So then, Karen must have thought Rivera had something to do with Dean’s death.”

  Carlos nodded. “Why else would she have him under surveillance?”

  “But why wouldn’t she tell somebody what she was up to?”

  Carlos eased back into his chair. “Because there wasn’t a case. The medical examiner ruled Bridget Dean’s death a suicide. If the captain knew she was spending department resources investigating a suicide when she should have been working the warehouse burglaries, he would have reprimanded her.”

  “Interesting.” I picked up one of the night shots of Rivera and studied it more closely. “Hey, check it out. Is it me, or does that guy at the café with Rivera seem sorely out of place?”

  “Carlos pulled up for another look. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, look. Everyone else in the photo is wearing business attire and office dress. This man is sporting a sleeveless shirt, cutoffs and flip-flops.” I fanned the photo over the others before pitching it back onto the pile. “I’d sure like to know who he is. I mean he looks more like someone Rivera would defend, not socialize with.”

  “Maybe he is,” said Spinelli.

  Carlos and I both looked up. “Come again?”

  “Maybe the guy’s a criminal, or should I say accomplice?”

  “Keen observation, Dom,” said Carlos. “It’s probably why Karen took the picture. Maybe she had the same thought.”

  “What about the other one?” I asked.

  “What other one?”

  “The other suicide victim. You said there were three. Did she also work for Hartman, Pierce and Petruzelli?”

  Carlos shook his head. “No, I believe she was a waitress somewhere.”

  “But she did work in the same building.” Spinelli said.

  Again Carlos and I looked up at him. “What?”

  “Yeah. I read that in the papers. There’s this coffee shop in the Hartman, Pierce and Petruzelli building, downstairs from the offices. The woman worked there as a waitress. I remember thinking that she had to know Bridget Dean, and how coincidental it seemed.”

  “Maybe too coincidental,” I said. I turned to Carlos, who looked slightly embarrassed. “You didn’t know that, Carlos?”

  “No, I didn’t,” he said, almost stuttering. “Dominic, why didn’t you point this out to me before?”

  He shrugged. “I didn’t realize you didn’t know.”

  For a while, we all just stared down at the photos on the desk, scratching our heads, trying to make sense of it all. To believe that two women working in the same building committed suicide only weeks apart, but that there were no other connections between them seemed ludicrous. Unless someone had put something in the water there, our suspicions, like Karen Webber’s, drew a very different conclusion than that of the coroner’s. I tapped on the photo of Rivera and his café mate to get Carlos’ attention.

  “Look, we need to know more about what Karen was working on,” I told him. “I know her surveillance of Rivera flew under the radar, but she had to have kept a record of her investigation if she ever thought it might come to prosecution. We need to see her files. She’s probably hidden clues among her caseload.”

  Carlos shook his head. “Can’t. Her files aren’t ours. Karen worked out of the First Precinct. We have some of her people here in the satellite office down the hall, but they’ve been no help.”

  “They won’t help you?”

  “Not that they won’t. They can’t. Her death was ruled suicide. They had no reason to sequester her files. Her supervisor divvied up her caseload and dispersed it throughout the entire department. I’m afraid we’re starting from scratch.”

  I looked down at the photos again. At least we had those, so it wasn’t really like starting from scratch. But we did have a long uphill battle ahead of us. I turned to Carlos and then to Spinelli. Both seemed ready and eager, and probably both had more confidence in me than I deserved. But their confidence felt like a shot in the arm. I had flown back to New Castle with reservations about getting involved in another serious case. My dread of failing notwithstanding, the thought of letting Carlos down, I feared, would crush me. I gathered the photos and stacked them into a neat pile.

  “That’s fine, then,” I said. “Starting from scratch might prove the be
st place to start anyway. Let’s take it from the end and work backward.”

  “The end?” said Spinelli, almost to himself. “For Detective Webber, the end was the sidewalk outside her apartment building last Friday night.”

  Carlos and I traded looks, undoubtedly thinking the same thing. Dominic Spinelli may have been one of the youngest detectives ever assigned to the Second Precinct, but he had an experienced sense of investigative direction. I stood up, pressed my hat to my chest and asked, “Do we have the address?”

  Carlos answered, “We do.” He scooped the photos back into the envelope and handed it to Detective Spinelli. “Dom, will you do me a favor?”

  Spinelli took the package and tucked it under his arm. “Sure.”

  “Find out everything you can on Rivera. I mean it. I want to know where he lives, what he drives, who he sees, if he’s ever had run-ins with the law: Everything.”

  “All right.”

  “And see what you can dig up on that waitress, too. You got it?”

  “Got it,” Spinelli answered, and he vanished down the hallway like a ghost.

  Carlos turned to me and smiled proudly. “Huh? How’s that for diligence?”

  “Nice,” I said.

  “Damn straight. Does he remind you of me when I was just starting out?”

  “A little.”

  “Yeah? Why, because of his tenacious thirst for knowledge?”

  “No, because he’s just a tad clumsy.” I pointed down the hall at the trail of photos that spilled from the envelope Spinelli had carried away under his arm.

  Carlos shrugged it off. “Yeah, well you should taste his lasagna. The kid’s got marinara running through his veins.”

  I shook my head and laughed. “Oh, like that’ll come in handy in this profession.”

  “It could,” he said, as we started down the hall, picking up photos of Ricardo Rivera along the way. “Especially on long stake-outs. Hey that reminds me. You hungry?”

  Hungry? I considered it. I hadn’t eaten since the day before, and it was already pushing noon. But I didn’t feel hungry, only anxious. I attributed that to the thought of going back to work on a new case. It was bad enough that the last one still haunted me. The possibility of a new one ending poorly nearly frightened me to death. Eating anything just seemed like a bad idea.

  Nevertheless, I knew Carlos. The guy is always hungry. And unless we could close the case on Karen Webber by simply scooping up the photos of Ricardo Rivera, then I knew I would have to sit down and eat with the man sometime.

  “Sure,” I said. “I could eat. What did you have in mind?”

  “I was thinking maybe The Percolator. They have some awesome lunch specials there.”

  “The Perk, huh?”

  “Yeah, it’ll be like old times. What do you say?”

  What could I say? The Percolator was like a second home to me for nearly forty years. I started going there when coffee was only a nickel. Of course that was the price for civilians. Cop coffee was always free. I started thinking that maybe Carlos was on to something. Still, I had to ease into the idea of putting solid food into my belly.

  “I’ll tell you what,” I said. “How `bout we go check out things at Karen’s apartment first, and then we’ll grab some grub?”

  He soured his face at that. “I guess.” He sounded disappointed. “In that case….” By then we were back in the lobby. Carlos dug deep into his pocket and pulled out a fistful of change. “Let me grab a Snickers.” He dropped some quarters into the vending machine and relieved it of its last Snickers bar. To see the look in his eyes, you would have thought he had rolled three cherries, only the pay out here was much more satisfying. I slapped him on the back as he joined up with me at the front door.

  “That going to hold ya?” I asked.

  He smiled and held the candy bar up to my face—minus one very large bite. “You kidding?”

  I let it go at that, though still uncertain if that was a yes or a no.

  Two

  We arrived at Detective Webber’s apartment building just as it started raining. A faint chalk line in the approximate shape of a human body was still visible on the sidewalk out front.

  I stood on the spot and looked straight up, blinking into the drizzle. One of the balconies four stories up still had crime scene tape flagging from its railings. I imagined that a fall from such a height would almost certainly kill a person instantly. For Detective Webber’s sake, I hoped that was the case. I looked at Carlos and found him assessing the situation similarly. He looked at me and we both looked down at the chalk line.

  “Probably quick,” he said.

  I nodded. “Yup.”

  We took the elevator to the fourth floor and found the sounds of life abuzz within the halls. A television set in one unit drowned out a baby’s wail in another.

  Behind one door, a woman hollered at her husband to get out and find a job. He hollered back that there weren’t any because the Mexicans had moved into town and taken them all. Carlos found that exchange particularly amusing, since the debate had been argued in Spanish. Out in the stairwell, the steady thumping of a boom box pulsed like the heartbeat of the building. A small dog, probably a terrier, yelped upon our approach from behind another closed door. I imagined it trotting off in triumph back to his doggy bed after hearing us shuffle on without breaking into his castle.

  We found Karen Webber’s apartment at the end of the hall, next to the Spanish couple’s unit. Carlos had secured a door key from the building super earlier, having exercised the rule of domain jurisdiction for tactical investigative purposes.

  “For what?” I asked, after learning of the bogus excuse.

  “Domain jurisdiction for tactical investigative purposes. You’ve heard of it?”

  “No I haven’t,” I said, “because you just made it up.”

  He pressed his finger to his lips. “No. I didn’t just make it up. I made it up this morning. But the super doesn’t need to know that.”

  He unlocked the door. I pushed him into the room when it opened. The apartment seemed a lot smaller than I expected, barely a studio, really. But then, Karen lived alone and hardly needed anything larger. And considering the ambiance of the building, she had managed to transform the place into quite a cozy little flat.

  The furnishings, a little too French Provincial for my taste, were neat, pictures on the walls tasteful and aesthetic. As a trained eye, I saw where police investigators had turned a few things over and poked at some of Karen’s belongings, but otherwise I imagined the apartment appeared just as she left it.

  On the dinette table, a place setting for two remained untouched. Two empty wineglasses sat next to a water-filled ice bucket containing a bottle of Bordeaux. A three-day-old pan of cooked lasagna sat on the stovetop growing brown and fuzzy.

  I turned to Carlos and found him thumbing through a stack of CDs by the stereo. “Carlos,” I said, “run it by me again. What’s the going theory about what happened here?”

  He pulled a CD from the stack and held it up, smiling. “Ooh, I love this one. Have you heard this girl yet? She kicks at old school.”

  I shook my head. “No. What is it, that rap crap hip-hop?”

  He laughed. “Yeah, Tony, that’s it. Rap crap hip-hop. That’s the kind of music I like.”

  “Well I don’t know. I don’t pay attention to that stuff.”

  “Don’t you?”

  “No. I’m more into classical: Beethoven, Mozart, that kind of stuff.”

  “I know. You’re stuck in a time warp. You should broaden your horizons. Think more contemporary.”

  “I do think contemporary. I listen to Goodman, Miller, Artie Shaw…guys like that.”

  “Ooh, real hip.”

  “Hey, songs like Moonglow and Stardust, they don’t ever go out of style.”

  He looked at me with creased brows. “Yeah, like your trench coat?”

  I splayed my arms and looked down at my attire. “What?”

  “Tony, d
etectives haven’t worn trench coats since the days of Sam Spade, Dick Tracy and Inspector Clouseau.”

  “So? Those men were all fine detectives.”

  “They were all fictional.”

  I looked down at my coat again and pulled on the creases. “Can we get back to what happened here?”

  He tossed the CD on top of the stack. “There’s the balcony,” he said, pointing across the room. “She jumped from there.”

  I looked back at it. “Any witnesses?”

  “Yeah, four teenage boys hanging out on the street corner. They all saw the same thing. Karen Webber stepped out onto the balcony, alone, hiked her dress up above her knees, climbed up over the railing and fell forward.”

  “And they saw no one else?”

  “Not until the police busted into her apartment ten minutes later.” He turned and pointed to the door. A security chain, still attached to its latch, dangled from a piece of wood on a splintered jamb.

  “The door was locked from the inside?” I started looking around for other points of entry, when Carlos stopped me.

  “Save it, Tony. There are no other windows or doors. There’s only one way in and two ways out.”

  “Two?”

  He pointed across the room again.

  I looked back over my shoulder at the balcony. “Oh, right.” I walked to the dinette table and reviewed the place settings again. “She was expecting company.”

  “Yup.”

  “A dinner date?”

  “I guess.”

  “Did he ever show?”

  “Not while the investigation was going on.”

  “Don’t you think that’s strange?”

  He crowded his brows and thinned his lips. “I don’t know.” Then he perked up. “Maybe that’s why she jumped.”

  “Because she got stood up?”

  “Possibly.”

  “I thought you thought she didn’t jump.”

  “Right. I don’t. I’m just looking at it from all angles.”

  “Keeping an open mind, eh?”

  “Yeah.”

  I took the conversation to the sliders overlooking the balcony. “I see black powder here on the glass and handle. They must have dusted for prints.”

  “They did,” said Carlos. He pointed to several other places around the apartment where prints had been lifted. “I think they got about a half-dozen really good ones. Unfortunately, they all belonged to Karen. Hey, do you suppose the killer wiped the place down?”

  “That thought crossed my mind, but if there was a killer, it’s more likely he wore gloves.”

  I watched a wisp of disappointment blow across his face. “If? So, you think she committed suicide.”

  “Like you said, we have to keep that door open, which leads me back to this dinner date of hers. Has anyone checked her phone records to see if she received any calls before she…went over? Maybe her date phoned in a cancellation.”

  Carlos took a small notepad from his pocket and started writing. “No, but that’s good. It might help us. I’ll get Dominic on it right away.”

  “While you’re at it, have him ask around the station and—”

  “The box,” he interrupted.

  “What?”

  “That’s what we call the justice center, Tony. We don’t call it the station.”

  “How come?”

  His eyes looked down briefly and then up. “I don’t know.”

  “Hmm, that sounds about right. Anyway, have Dominic ask around. See if anyone knows who Karen may have been dating.” I pointed to the broken chain on the door. “And what about that? Do we know for sure the cops broke the chain busting into the apartment?”

  “I suppose.”

  “Suppose isn’t certain.”

  “What are you thinking?”

  “I’m thinking that you know me better. You tell me?”

  He turned and gave the door a good hard look. I could see his thought process at work, churning out ideas that he had not previously considered. He touched his chin whiskers and stroked them absentmindedly. Then his eyes moved down to the doorknob, and I imagined a light bulb in his head turning on at that moment. He spun about on his heel and pointed at me, excitedly.

  “They didn’t bust in, did they? If the cops busted through the door, then the jamb along the doorknob would also have splintered! Karen opened the door with the chain still latched, right?”

  “Possibly,” I said.

  “Yeah. I bet she answered the door for someone she knew, and then had second thoughts about letting him in.”

  “You’re working it now.”

  “So, Karen tried to shut the door, but whoever it was pushed it open, breaking the chain in the process. Then at gunpoint, forced Karen to the balcony and made her jump. He probably stood back far enough from the window so that no one in the street could see him. Right?”

  I smiled proudly, rewarded by the enthusiasm of his spirit. It reminded me of all the years we worked together, and of his total willingness to embrace new possibilities. “Honestly,” I told him, “I don’t know. But if the investigators believed that the first responders broke the door in, then they would have no reason to suspect that Karen wasn’t here alone.”

  “Makes sense.”

  “Let’s follow up on that. And I don’t just mean reading the responding officer’s report. Maybe the medical examiner took the wording too literally. If it said, ‘We broke in…’ and he assumed the broken chain meant by force, then we could have a serious misinterpretation on our hands.”

  Carlos made another notation in his little book. “Got it,” he said, punching a period at the end of his note. “I’ll get with Dom, find out who the officer was and we’ll go straight to the horse’s mouth.” He looked up from his notepad. “Now, there’s just one more thing.”

  I checked my watch. It was twelve-thirty. “You want to go eat now.”

  He pulled the car keys from his pocket and jingled them in front of me. “It’s Monday.”

  I admit that I shrugged at the significance of that. “What’s so special about Mondays?”

  He looked at me as if I had just stepped off the boat. “Tony! Monday is meatball madness day at the Perk. Twice the meatballs, half the price.”

  “You’re a meatball,” I said, and I snatched the keys from his hand. “I’ll drive. I don’t want you getting us killed over mashed meat.”

  We shut the apartment door and locked up behind us. The rain had stopped while we were inside, but that didn’t make me want to give the keys back to Carlos. The truth was I didn’t want to get to The Percolator too quickly. The thought of meatballs smothered with grated Parmesan made me want to hurl. I hoped we would spot another restaurant that I might talk him into going to, instead. Almost anything else would do. But Carlos had his heart set on meatballs. He’s like a kid that way. And me, I’m just a big softy with kids.

  Ten minutes later, we pulled into the parking lot of The Percolator. I swear the place had not changed at all in the years since I last visited it. But then, years in the life of the Perk were like minutes in history. They still brewed their coffee from a vintage brewer, circa 1940, and I know the grease on the griddle is left over from the hash browns I ordered on my first day on the beat. In a way, it was sort of like coming home again. It gave me a warm feeling and a sense of nostalgia that made me long for the old days. It’s funny how the simple things in life can sometimes stick with you the longest.

  Carlos and I got lucky and found a booth in the corner that had just opened up. We no sooner sat down, when he asked if I remembered an incident that happened there, involving a coffee spill and a certain waitress who tried to dry the spill from his lap. I told him I did, and that he should still feel embarrassed about it.

  “I do,” he replied, and then pointed across the room at a young blond-haired beauty working the lunch counter. “But you know after that little misunderstanding, we became good friends. Her name’s Natalie, and she hears all the dope on everything going on aro
und town, both from the cops here and her regulars. Maybe she heard some scuttlebutt about Karen Webber or Bridget Dean.”

  I picked up a menu and began leafing through it, hoping to spot something lighter than the usual grease plates that were hard to hold down. The entire time I could see Carlos leaning forward on his elbows, straining to peer over the top of the menu to hold my attention.

  “So, what do you think?” When I didn’t answer, he hooked his finger over the top of the page and bent it down an inch. “Ya think I should go over there and ask her?”

  He seemed impatient for me to say yes, though whether motivated by a desire to show me how well he connected with young women, or by eagerness to solve the case, I couldn’t be sure. And since he doesn’t connect well with young women, I had to assume the latter. I snapped the fold back into the menu and pulled it from his reach.

  “I don’t know, Carlos. Maybe later. She looks busy now. Besides, I’d rather not everyone within earshot know our business.”

  He settled back into his seat, a little deflated. I knew that would only last a minute before he perked up with another bright idea. He hadn’t even opened his menu when it hit him.

  “I know!” he sounded more excited than the idea warranted. “I could leave her a note; ask her to call me on her break.”

  “Oh, that’s a good idea.” I rolled my eyes, expecting he’d pick up on the sarcasm. “Why don’t you do that?”

  I didn’t have the heart to stop him after he pulled his notepad from his pocket and started writing. Besides, it bought me a little peace and quiet for the moment, long enough to decide what I wanted for lunch. When our server came by, I ordered up toast and coffee. I figured I couldn’t go wrong with that. Carlos didn’t need to look at the menu. He ordered a meatball sub with extra meatballs. I thought he might even ask for a meatball shake to wash it all down. If I gave him the idea, he probably would have. Instead, he went with a more reasonable choice: Coke. I can’t tell you how glad I was for that.

  After taking our orders, the server accepted the note from Carlos intended for Natalie. He instructed her not to let anyone else read it. “It’s police business,” he whispered, his hand to the side of his mouth. Then he gave her a wink and shooed her away. He looked at me after she left, smiling at his own cleverness. I shook my head and made a tisk sound through my teeth.

  “What?” he said. I watched his smile fade.

  “Do you think that was wise?” I asked him.

  “What do you mean?”

  “That note. You don’t really think she’ll give it to Natalie without reading it. Do you?”

  “Why wouldn’t she?”

  “You told her it was police business. Curiosity will surely get the better of her. She’ll read it and think you’ll want to ask questions about her. Natalie will never get it now.”

  “You think?”

  “Sure.” The urge to laugh nearly overwhelmed me, but a cop learns to keep a poker face, especially when playing a joke on a fellow officer. And the longer you can keep it up, the greater the reward. I kept a straight face and dismissed it as if it meant nothing. “You know what, Carlos?” I waved my hand in a flutter. “Don’t worry about it. We’ll talk to her some other time.”

  I probably shouldn’t have done it to him. Carlos worried so much about Natalie getting his note, that he barely touched his extra meatballs. All during lunch I caught him looking over his shoulder at the lunch counter to see if she would notice him. Each time he saw her eyes drifting toward our booth, he would try nodding or waving to get her attention. Despite his efforts, or in spite of them, she failed to acknowledge his existence.

  We were about to ask for our check and leave, when I heard the little bell jingle over the door. At once, nearly every head in the place turned, including Carlos’. In all my years, I only knew one individual who could command that kind of presence when entering a room. I turned to the door, and her name spilled from my lips like a song.

  “Lilith Adams.”

  She appeared more stunning than I remembered. Perhaps because the last time we met, I was actively engaged in an investigation to nail her for murder. You tend to see through a person’s beauty when you factor a homicide into the equation. With the fog of nadir lifted, I could now fully appreciate the utter brilliance of her beauty. Her skin, the color of cappuccino even in the perpetual gloom of New England’s April rains, seemed to radiate a luminescence unequaled in nature. Her long black hair flowed in silky threads like smoke on glass.

  She stood against the open door, one hand on her hip, one knee bent, her blue jeans tighter than cellophane, her buttoned shirt half-opened down the front but tucked in along the back.

  It’s not to say that I had forgotten Lilith Adams altogether, though hard I tried. Visions of her all but consumed me the first few weeks I was away from New Castle. Shades of Lilith filled my sleepless nights. I could not shake the insult of her sassy attitude, snide remarks and daring laugh. Her cocky posture burned in silhouette deep within the crevices of my mind.

  A man my age can only hope to forget such things in a woman, especially one so much younger and vivacious. But there is one thing a man can never forget, something I will never forget: her eyes, her wildly captivating, hopelessly hypnotic, fathomless, flirtatious, blazing and beguiling ebony eyes. They shall haunt me in my dreams for as long as I live. I’ve looked into those eyes and seen the fervency of hell, yet I hold that somewhere in her soul she knows of it only from a distance.

  Lilith patrolled the diner with sweeping glances, starting at the front by the lunch counter and working back. Those who recognized her scooted their chairs away from the door. Those that didn’t, followed suit just the same. When the mine sweep crossed our booth, our eyes locked. I heard Carlos swallow back a lump in his throat. I reached across the table without looking and patted his hand to hush him.

  “Easy, boy,” I said. “She’s not going to bite.”

  His whispered reply I could hardly hear, but I believe he said, “You sure?”

  She let the door go, and as it hit her ass, she started walking. She headed straight for our booth with a whip in her strut. I saw Carlos’ hand slip behind his jacket on his holster side. He could have pulled his gun and shot her, and I suppose it would have all been worth it, except for some paperwork. But I slapped the hand that he still had on the table and I made him stop reaching. Lilith clicked her heels at the foot of our table and folded her arms tightly below her breasts.

  “Detective Marcella,” she snapped, already sounding confrontational. “I heard you were in town.”

  I smiled up at her, pleasantly as I could. “Lilith, what a coincidence. I heard you were in town, too.”

  “No coincidence. I live here. But you know that.”

  “You’re right. I also know you didn’t come here for the food, but please, have a seat anyway.”

  I scooted over enough to let her slide in next to me. She smiled pretentiously, and instead slapped Carlos on the shoulder.

  “Move it, Fidel!” she barked, and then crowded him into the corner where the rips in the imitation leather seats jabbed at his butt. I tried not to laugh, but the look of absolute violation on his face was priceless. It didn’t help matters when she nudged the plate of extra meatballs in front of him with a fork like it was nuclear waste. Carlos relocated the plate to a section of table less offensive.

  “Do you mind?” he said, wiping his fingers clean of sauce with a paper napkin. “Really. What is your problem?”

  “My problem,” she said, and this she directed at me, “is that I’ve been trying to find a way to reach you for nearly a year.”

  “Me?” I pointed to myself.

  “Yes you. Nobody in your stinking precinct would tell me where you went or what happened to you.”

  “Lilith, I’m touched. I didn’t know you cared so much.”

  She made a face as if a sour nut had just come up her throat. “You have something I want.”

  I straightened up in my
seat and pulled on my lapels. “Do I? Frankly, I didn’t think I was your type.”

  “Pah—leeease, Detective. I’d sooner sleep with Fidel, over here.” She jabbed her thumb into Carlos’ side, hitting his holstered gun. They turned and looked at each other, equally surprised. “Yeah, you,” she said. “You can just forget about it, my little Copacabana boy. You’re already about as close to me as you’re ever going to get. So, take a deep breath and savor it.”

  “Lilith!” I said, no longer amused. “You’re getting a little mean-spirited in your old age, aren’t you? Whatever happened to decorum and courtesy?”

  “They’re dead, Detective, along with my friends from the research center.”

  “And whose fault is that?”

  “Not mine!” she barked, loud enough for heads in the diner to turn again. “If that’s what you’re insinuating.”

  “No?”

  “Certainly not.”

  “Right, I forgot. I guess Shekina and Akasha Kayo weren’t friends of yours. So, killing them doesn’t count.”

  “You can’t prove that.”

  “How about Doctor Lieberman?”

  “Forget Lieberman. How `bout Gordon Walsh? You had him in your custody and you let him hang himself. Or did he have help?”

  I slammed my fist down hard on the table, causing silverware on plates to chatter and Carlos’ Coke to splash from his glass. “Are you saying I had something to do with Gordon’s suicide?”

  “I’m saying he was yours to watch. You had a responsibility. Hadn’t enough people already died by then?”

  “Why—you little….” I lunged across the table at her. So help me, I wanted to hurt her. I don’t know why. I had already beaten myself up over Gordon Walsh’s death. To a great degree, though, Lilith was right. Gordon was mine to watch. I should have known he was suicidal after all that happened. But things were really falling apart at that point in the investigation. And that I was with Lilith when he killed himself only made matters worse. I suppose Carlos, witnessing this verbal joust, predicted my unprofessional response to her overtures. As quickly as I came at her, he somehow managed to insert himself between us, preventing my fool-hearted assault.

  When things settled down, I apologized to both Lilith and Carlos, expressing my regrets and condemning my actions as conduct unbecoming an officer of the law, retired or otherwise. Carlos, of course, accepted. Lilith’s forgiveness came in a more roundabout way.

  “That’s all right, Detective,” she said. Strange, but I noticed how not a single hair on her head went amiss. “I understand you still have some unresolved issues regarding your last case. Believe it or not, so do I.”

  “You?” I said. “That’s funny, because I thought you were the only one that got from the case what you wanted.”

  “And what was that?”

  “Validation. I know they all laughed at your witchcraft and your witch’s ladder. But you showed them. Didn’t you?”

  “That witch’s ladder saved your wrinkled old ass.”

  “I’m not denying that.”

  “No, you’re not. But since we’re on the subject, let me tell you why I came looking for you.”

  There is something very unsettling about having a witch tell you that she’s been looking for you. I couldn’t imagine it was a good thing. I pitched back in my seat and gestured for her to continue.

  “As I said, Detective, you have something I want.”

  “And that is?”

  “You remember when you rescued Leona Diaz from the basement of the research center?”

  “Where Doctor Lowell had her tied to the bed, of course.”

  “Well I—”

  Just then, a voice called out to us from the other end of the diner. “Detective Rodriquez! Detective Marcella!” Dominic Spinelli waved to us from the front door and then hurried to the booth in a sprint. “There you are. I thought I might find you two here.”

  “Dominic!” Carlos clearly seemed happy to see him. “How did you get here?”

  “I caught a ride in a black and white.”

  “Well, good.”

  “Spinelli,” I said. “Have a seat. Let me introduce you to Lilith.” He took a seat next to me and offered his hand across the table. She looked at it, at him, and then finally at me. That sour expression revisited her face. I smiled and said, “Humor him. He’s a good kid.”

  She reached out and they shook. “You’re a detective? What are you, like, fifteen?”

  “Twenty-six,” he replied, feigning insult, as I’m sure he gets a lot of that. “Probably older than you.”

  “Don’t go there,” I said. “You don’t ever want to ask a witch her age.”

  He looked at her with wide eyes. “A witch? Right, you’re Lilith Adams! I read about you.”

  She pulled back, and although she seldom showed it, we all witnessed her smile. “Did you?”

  “Yes, in the official case reports that Detectives Rodriquez and Marcella filed last year. Of course, there was no mention of you being a witch. But Detective Rodriquez filled me in on all the juicy tid-bits. Hey, you know someone should write a book about you.”

  “You think?”

  “Absolutely! You’re fascinating.”

  Lilith glanced our way. “Detectives, where did you find this boy? He’s absolutely adorable.”

  “Hey,” said Carlos. “Maybe Dominic should write your book.” He turned to Lilith and offered, “He’s expertly versed on the occult, you know. He would do a great job with it.”

  “Would he, now?” She leaned her head back and sized Dominic up one side and down the other. “You’ve studied witches?”

  “Some,” he replied. “Witches, witchcraft, the Wiccan religion and basically all the Neo-Pagan theologies.”

  “What do you mean all of them?” Carlos joked. “Isn’t one Satan worshiper the same as another?”

  “Ho, boy, here we go,” said Lilith, rolling her eyes. She turned to Carlos and fed him a—let me tell you something—look, and then started in, “First of all, Fidel, witches—”

  “Please,” said Dominic, reaching across the table and touching Lilith’s arm. “Allow me.” He looked at Carlos, but kept his hand on Lilith’s sleeve. Surprisingly, she didn’t pull away.

  “Carlos,” he said, “if there’s one thing you should know about Neo-Pagan worshipers, it’s that they don’t worship Satan. And though witches are Neo-Pagans, not all Neo-Pagans are witches. Some Neo-Pagans are Wiccans. And, though witches aren’t Wiccan, some Wiccans practice witchcraft. And most, particularly witches, don’t even believe in Satan. Like Wiccans, some witches believe in deities of nature—natural spirits. A traditional witch’s creed is, ‘If thee harm none, then do as thou wilt.’” He turned to Lilith and smiled. “Does that sound about right, Miss Adams?”

  She smiled back, her thin brows punctuated in parentheses. “Yeah,” she said, satisfied. “Close enough.” They held eye contact for a curiously long time. Looking at Spinelli it wasn’t hard to tell what he was thinking. Lilith, on the other hand—and as usual, was much harder to read. This continued until both Carlos and I felt sufficiently uncomfortable. I nudged Spinelli out of his groove like a stuck record needle. He blinked the spell broken. Lilith turned to me next, and her expression changed dramatically.

  “Detective,” she spat, “about Leona Diaz.”

  “Yes,” I responded, zeroing in where we left off. “Of course I remember rescuing her from the basement of the research center. What about it?”

  “Leona had in her possession at the time, a string of beads. Do you remember that?”

  “Her rosary.”

  “Not her rosary.”

  “Ah then you must mean the witch’s ladder.”

  “Yes. I want it.”

  “I don’t have it.”

  “But you said—”

  “I didn’t say I had it. I knew about it because Leona had it when she showed herself to me in an apparition during one of her out-of-body experiences.”

 
; “Detective, I talked to Leona. She told me the beads were on a nightstand next to her bed where you found her.”

  I threw my hands up in surrender. “I’m sorry. Someone else must have taken it because I don’t have your precious witch’s ladder. What’s the big deal, anyway? Why do you want it back so badly? You can make another.”

  “I don’t want another.” She slid out of the booth, sweeping a set of silverware off the table with her hand. All eyes in the diner turned toward the commotion and watched her storm out the door in a devil’s fury.

  Carlos, Spinelli and I traded uncomfortable glances, ignoring the patrons that turned their eyes on us. I reached down, collected the silverware and set the pieces back on the table. Carlos, in his uniquely optimistic manner, summed it up best when he said simply, “That went well.”

  Spinelli nodded. “It did.”

  “Yes, not bad,” I echoed.

  Again, Spinelli, “She seemed nice. I like her.”

  Carlos and I let that one go.

  We flagged our server and called for our tab. Carlos paid for it with a twenty. As we waited for his change, I noticed that Spinelli seemed unusually quiet. Asked if everything was all right, he said yes, but admitted that he remained confused about something.

  “About what?” I asked.

  “The witch’s ladder,” he said. “I’ve done enough studying up on them. I know you can make a ladder from almost anything: a piece of rope with forty knots tied in it, a string of forty beads, a lock of someone’s hair braided in a herringbone pattern with forty stitches (that one was new to me). And it can harbor awesome energy. But what I don’t get is why she wants hers back so badly. Once a witch’s ladder has served its purpose, or failed to serve it, it degrades back to a powerless object. By now, that ladder is useless to anyone.”

  I looked at Carlos and gestured with my thumb at Spinelli. “Who is this guy? And where was he last year when we needed him?” The two laughed, but I was only half joking.

  “Hey, Tony.” Carlos pitched a knowing nod to me. “What did happen to that witch’s ladder?”

  “Shut up,” I snapped. “I don’t have it.”

  He got his change and left a nice tip. We gathered at the door when Natalie, the lunch counter waitress, hurried over to us. She excused herself to Spinelli and me before crowding Carlos away from the door for a more private conversation. I could see from the look on his face that he thought the reward for his clever note was about to pay off big. She squeezed his forearm lightly and dropped her eyes in a bashful pout.

  “Mister Rodriquez,” I heard her say, though really, I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop. It’s a curse of the business. “I got your note about you wanting me to call you, and I noticed you waving at me, trying to get my attention earlier. But I want you to know that I like you as a friend. I mean, you are a few years older and…. I know you’re nice and everything, but I’m afraid it just wouldn’t work out between us. I hope you’re not too hurt.”

  Though his jaw dropped, the words could not find their way out. I decided to help him and so I stepped in without asking. “Oh, he understands,” I said to Natalie, patting her hand and prying it gently from his arm. “It’s a shocker, I know, but he’ll get over it. Just give him some time.”

  I got her turned around and ushered her back to her lunch counter. Meanwhile, Spinelli steered Carlos out the door before he could totally make an ass—a bigger ass—out of himself. Once outside, the gravity of the incident hit him, as he realized he couldn’t possibly eat at the lunch counter ever again.

  “Don’t worry,” I said, patting him on the shoulder. “We’ll always have our special booth.”

  We all got into the cruiser for the ride back to the justice center. It was Spinelli sitting in the back seat who summed up Carlos’ mishap best this time, when he repeated an assessment made earlier, saying simply, “That went well.”

  Three

  When we got back to the justice center, Spinelli presented us with a wealth of information that he gathered off a system called E.I.N.I., or Electronic Intelligence Network Interface. All I know is that in my day, you had a telephone, a radio and dispatch and if you were lucky, a good pair of walking shoes, because unless you hit the streets you weren’t going to learn a damn thing about the case you were working on. But the kid did all right with his electronics, and as it turned out his best information did come from working the field.

  Carlos kicked it off. “All right, Dom, lay it on us. What do you have?”

  Spinelli produced a small envelope from inside his jacket and pulled from that a photo of Bridget Dean. Carlos and I both nearly swallowed our tongues. The woman screamed class with a capital C. I pegged her at around thirty-ish, but she could have passed for much younger if her hair was down and you traded in her business suit for blue denim cut-offs and a snappy crop top. Simply going by the photo, you would have to say that the woman was a peach, but Spinelli had the dirt to paint her in a much different light.

  “Her name was Bridget Jean Dean,” he started, “thirty two, single, born in New Castle, educated at Harvard. She joined the law firm of Hartman, Pierce and Petruzelli after her hard-hitting, take-no-prisoners attitude as a prosecutor caught the attention of Mister Petruzelli himself.”

  “I bet it was more than her lawyer skills that caught his attention,” Carlos joked.

  Spinelli barely paused. “The woman displayed an almost sixth sense with her cases. She never lost. After five and a half years of undying dedication to the firm, not to mention her recent win of a high-profile, extremely lucrative, class-action law suit against a major pharmaceutical, HP&P decided to make her a full-fledged partner.”

  “Wow. Kudos to her,” I uttered.

  “So, what was her problem?” Carlos asked. “Sounds like she was riding on top of the world. Why would she kill herself?”

  “Good question,” I said. “Spinelli? Any theories?”

  “Just one. She didn’t.”

  Carlos said, “Yet, she’s dead just the same.”

  I said, “Let’s assume someone killed her. What about Rivera. What did you find there?”

  “Plenty.” Spinelli reached into the envelope and pulled out another photo. “This woman….” He handed the photo to Carlos. I came around his desk and leaned over his shoulder to have a look. Neither he nor I needed as much time to study that one. The woman in the photo was about as ugly as a train wreck. I know that’s not very professional, but sometimes you just have to call a spade a spade. “…That’s Mallory Edwards,” he continued. “She works at HP&P on the same floor as Rivera. She’s not a lawyer. She mostly transcribes documents, prepares legal briefs—that sort of thing.”

  “And she gave you her photo?”

  “No, I downloaded it. She has a page on Blog-Hog.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Blog-Hog dot com. It’s a community web site where anyone can post pictures, bios, things you’d put in a blog.”

  I turned to Carlos. “Do you know what he’s talking about?”

  “Sure. A blog is short for weblog. People upload pictures, videos, poems and essays, bits of their life that they want to share to express themselves.”

  “Why would someone want to do that?”

  “It’s called inclusion, Tony. It’s a way to keep in step with the world at-large, to meet people and to have fun.”

  “Do you have a blog?”

  “No.”

  “How `bout you, Spinelli. Do you have one?”

  Spinelli shook his head. “No, sir, I don’t.”

  “I see. So, it’s just some passing fad. Is that it?”

  “Yeah, Tony,” Carlos answered, though I think I detected a touch of sarcasm. “It’s just like the Internet: a passing fad.” He looked at Spinelli and gave the kid a nod. “Continue, Dom.”

  “Sure.” Now he and Carlos were sharing secret smiles. “Anyway,” said Dominic, “this Mallory woman absolutely hates Rivera, and feelings are mutual. She told me that Ricardo Rivera became liv
id when Bridget Dean got the promotion he felt he deserved.”

  “Really?” I said. “Was he supposed to get it?”

  “I don’t know, but he expected it. Rivera’s been with the firm four years longer than Dean has. He and Hartman played golf together all the time. And when Hartman confided in Rivera that he planned on retiring soon, Rivera assumed he told him so that he could prepare for the promotion.”

  “But then Bridget Dean won that big case,” said Carlos, “and that changed everything, right?”

  “I don’t know if it changed everything. According to Mallory Edwards, Bridget Dean was a pit bull, a no-holds-barred attorney. Pierce and Petruzelli aligned her for that job long before Hartman announced his plans for retirement. If Rivera didn’t see it coming, he should have.”

  I came back around the desk and gave Spinelli a good hard slap on the back. “So, now we have a suspect and a motive. Good work, kid.”

  He hunched sharply under the slap with a wince that indicated pain. It made me think he didn’t have the bone structure Carlos had. I used to whack the crap out of Carlos all the time, and he never flinched. Then again, Carlos is built like a brick shithouse. Spinelli stood his ground, though. I’ll give him that. I mean he didn’t actually fall over or anything. He smiled thin-lipped at me. “Ah, it’s Dominic, sir,” he said.

  “What?”

  “My first name is Dominic. It’s okay if you use it. I much prefer it over, kid.”

  “Dominic?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Huh. All right, Spinelli, I’ll remember that.”

  I pulled the chair out from across the desk and sat down just as Carlos stood up. “Wait a minute.” I watched him herd his brows down low over his eyes. “It doesn’t add up. We have a suspect and a motive, but we still don’t have a crime. Remember Dean’s death was ruled a suicide. We need more evidence before we can call it a murder.”

  “I’m working on that,” Spinelli answered. “Mallory Edwards told me that Dean’s suicide took place in her office. The firm is very conscientious about security. They may have videotape of the incident. She’s trying to get us a copy as we speak.”

  “Excellent!” I clapped my hands and rubbed them together vigorously. “Now tell us what you have on that third woman, the waitress from the coffee shop.”

  Spinelli shook his head. “Not much. I’m still calling in favors on that one. I know her name was Anna Davalos, but that’s about all.”

  I slapped him on the back again, this time easy, so as not to fracture his obviously compromised skeletal structure. “It’s okay, son, you did well.”

  “Wait,” he said, with a smile usually reserved for the ever annoying, I-told-you-so and the What-do-you-think-of-that? “Don’t you want to hear the rest?” Oh, yeah, and that, too.

  Carlos and I both looked at his throat. Together we figured we could wring fourteen to sixteen fingers around it—plus our thumbs. “All right,” I said, biting. “Let’s hear it.”

  “The man in the picture at the café with Rivera? Do you want to know who he is?” Our fingers really began twitching now. I suspect he noticed, because he didn’t wait for us to answer. “His name is Gregory Piakowski. He’s an ex-con who went to high school with Rivera.”

  “No!” said Carlos.

  “Yes. The guy has a rap sheet a mile long. And get this. Back when he was a public defender, Rivera got a conviction of murder-one overturned for Piakowski.”

  “That’s incredible.”

  “Unbelievable.” I said, dumbstruck at that. “So, I guess this Piakowski fellow owes Rivera big.”

  Carlos agreed, adding, “Yes, but the question is: has he already paid that debt back?”

  “Do we know how to find this guy?” I asked Spinelli.

  He shook his head. “I searched E.I.N.I. We have no known addresses on him. His last place of residence was the Billerica Correctional Institution. He spent two years there before getting out on parole for good behavior.”

  “Well, then he must have a P.O. What does he say about it?”

  “Not much. His parole officer hasn’t seen or heard from him in months.”

  “Hmm…all right, we’ll look into that later. In the meantime, we need that videotape from Dean’s office.”

  “I know. I’m working on it.”

  “And Anna Davalos. Dig up what you can. Don’t leave any stone unturned. I want to know how she plays into all this.”

  Carlos asked, “You think she does?”

  “I’m sure of it. I just don’t know how. Yet.”

  Spinelli left, and soon after, Carlos and I decided it was time to sit down with Ricardo Rivera for a little one-on-one. Okay, so that’s two-on-one, but we promised to take turns.

  We caught up with Rivera at his office on the fourteenth floor of the Hartman, Pierce and Petruzelli building.

  I remember when the San Juan Bank was the tallest building in town, five stories and a radio tower. That was before HP&P built a mega-monument designed to rival anything New Castle had ever built before. The new justice center notwithstanding, at fifteen glittering stories plus a penthouse loft, the glass and marble structure of the HP&P building dwarfed and embarrassed all others built previously. It didn’t matter whether or not you held partnership in the firm. If you were lucky enough to occupy an office above the ninth floor, you commanded a superior view of New Castle and the Greater Vicinity.

  Rivera’s secretary buzzed us into his office. He greeted us warmly (though I have met lawyers before. It means nothing. Trust me). We shook hands, and he offered us a seat on two fine leather wingbacks that likely set the firm back a cool ten grand.

  Rivera’s dress didn’t let the ambiance down, either. He sported an Armani with gold cufflinks the size of dinner plates, a diamond tie clip that probably doubled as a chandelier at evening cocktail parties, and an oddly undersized gold ring on his pinky finger, shaped like half a broken heart.

  We all took our seats, but not before Carlos found it necessary to comment on the fantastic view out the window behind Rivera’s desk. I think he may have even said something like, “Hey, look. I can see my house from here!”

  Rivera laughed at that, and a few other things that weren’t funny, and then we got down to business. I could see why he thought he might become the next full-fledged partner in the firm. His confidence level read off the charts. He came off remarkably astute and seemed apt at anticipating ones moves by gestures alone. It’s probably the reason he didn’t seem surprised to see us, nor did he appear particularly worried. I let Carlos have the first crack at him. You should have seen the old boy. After the novelty of high-rise gawking wore off, he really came out swinging hard and made me proud.

  “Mister Rivera,” he started. He tossed the picture of Rivera and Piakowski at the café down on to the desk. “You want to tell us who the man in that photo is?”

  Rivera picked up the photo and examined it closely. “It’s me.”

  “Funny. I mean the other man.”

  “Detective, am I to understand that you have me under surveillance?”

  “Just answer the question, please.”

  “Do I need a lawyer?” He joked, and laughed dully.

  “If you feel you must.”

  “I’m kidding, Detective.”

  “We’re not here for jokes,” said Carlos. “If you prefer, we can go downtown and do this.”

  Rivera shook his head dismissively. “There’s no need for that.” He pitched the photo back onto the desk. It slid across the surface and came to rest teetering on the edge in front of Carlos. “That man’s a friend of mine. Name’s Gregory Piakowski. Looks to me like we were enjoying a coffee together. Is that a crime?”

  “Piakowski is a known felon. Why would a man in your position socialize with him?”

  Rivera pushed his seat away from the desk enough to cross his legs and cup his hands over his kneecap. I recognized the body language as a deliberate attempt to portray a comfort level not necessarily enjoyed.

>   “Detective, whom I choose to socialize with is none of your business,” he said, “nor anyone’s for that matter. I’m not running for public office, and I’m not worried about winning any popularity contests. Piakowski is an old school chum of mine. We keep in touch now and then. Like I said, the last time I looked, that wasn’t a crime.”

  Carlos pulled his notepad from his jacket pocket and started writing. I leaned over his shoulder and saw that his notes were merely loose scribbling. It’s an old trick I taught him years ago. If you let the interviewee think you’re taking notes on everything he says, even if you’re not, then it helps to trip him up. They tend to become preoccupied trying to remember what they told you to keep their story straight.

  I didn’t expect that trick would work on a guy like Rivera all that well, though. A practiced lawyer with highly polished debating skills would not allow himself the contradictions. Still, I gave Carlos high marks for effort.

  Carlos finished his scribble and looked back up at Rivera. “Let’s move on to Bridget Dean. I understand you didn’t like her very much. Is that true?”

  “What? Are you suggesting I killed her?”

  “I didn’t say that. I merely asked—”

  “I know what you asked. And unless you don’t believe she committed suicide, the question is totally out of line—regardless of whether I liked her or not.”

  “So, you didn’t like her.”

  “Nobody liked her, except maybe that tail-chasing hound, Petruzelli. I mean, Bridget Dean was an insensitive bitch. She stepped on more toes climbing the success ladder than I care to imagine.”

  “I see. So, I take it you don’t feel she earned her promotion to full partnership fair and square.”

  “Oh, she earned it, Detective, on her back and on her knees. The woman stopped at nothing to further her career—and I mean nothing.”

  “I’m sensing more hostility here than simple office rivalry.” I knew right away where Carlos was going, and I was glad to see it, because if he hadn’t gone there, I’d have taken that road myself. “Mister Rivera, do you mind if I ask you a personal question?”

  “You want to know if I ever fucked Bridget.”

  “I was going to say dated her?”

  “Please, Detective...Rodriquez, is it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Detective Rodriquez, of course I dated her. Who hasn’t? Truth is, Bridget and I go way back. We actually dated in high school. How do you think she got her job here at HP&P?”

  “I thought she caught the eye of a senior partner.”

  “She did, but only after I introduced her into my inner circle at one of our company picnics.”

  “You invited her to a company function as a date?”

  “Sure. I thought it might be nice to hook up with her again after the years we spent apart.”

  “You mean you wanted to sleep with her again.”

  “I wanted to get to know her again.”

  “And what? She used that opportunity to get her foot in the door at HP&P?”

  He splayed his hands like a man surrendering. “Just another rung on her ladder, I guess.”

  “So you resented her for that?”

  He shrugged. “At first, maybe. But I knew what she was when I slept with her the first time. I blame only myself. A leopard doesn’t change its spots. She’s trashed my heart before, but I’m over it.”

  “Has she done worse by you before?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Did she abort your child?”

  “Carlos!” I said. I reached over and grabbed his arm.

  Rivera slammed his hands down on the desk and shot to his feet. “Where did you hear that? Mallory Edwards? I suppose the woman told you I killed Anna Davalos, too.”

  “You knew Anna?”

  He got suddenly quiet. I thought he might point to the door and ask Carlos and me to leave. Instead, he reeled his emotions back in. He pulled at his jacket, brushed out wrinkles that were not there and then calmly reclaimed his seat. I imagined that sort of self-discipline proved invaluable to him in a courtroom. What it might do for him on a witness stand remained unseen. After sitting back down, Rivera folded his hands neatly on the desk and continued.

  “Of course I knew Anna Davalos. She worked downstairs in the coffee shop for God’s sake. And if you dig a little deeper, I’m sure you’ll find it’s no secret that we dated on and off for years.”

  “So, you freely admit this to us?”

  He looked at me and pointed at Carlos. “Is this guy for real?” I shrugged. “Detective, like I said, it’s no secret. If you’re looking into her death, then it’ll come out. I have nothing to hide. The woman was unstable. So was Bridget Dean for that matter. That’s the reason women kill themselves, isn’t it? If you ask me, they’re doing society a favor. Now if only Mallory Edwards would jump off a tall building somewhere and do us all a favor.”

  Carlos and I exchanged immediate glances. I could tell he wanted to bring up Karen Webber’s death after that comment. But I gave him a no with a subtle head shake, not wanting to lay all the cards out on the table at once. He scribbled the name, Mallory, on his notepad and tilted it toward me. This time I nodded yes.

  “What’s your beef with Miss Edwards?” Carlos asked. “Wanting her to jump off a building is kind of rough. Don’t you think?”

  He scooted his chair forward and squared his elbows on the desktop. “Life is kind of rough, Detective. But my beef with that woman is her obsession with my kid brother, Benjamin.”

  “Is your brother a minor?”

  “No. He’s twenty-one, but he’s…special, if you know what I mean.”

  “Retarded?”

  “Slow. But he’s a good kid and he works hard. I got him a job here in the building so that I could keep an eye on him.”

  “What does he do?”

  He shrugged. “Simple janitorial stuff mostly, you know, he changes light bulbs, empties wastebaskets, distributes the mail, that sort of thing. He gets by, don’t get me wrong, but he’s led a very sheltered life and he doesn’t need the predacious attention of an older woman like Mallory.”

  “Predacious?” said Carlos, sounding surprised. “You consider her a predator?”

  “I do when she tries to lure mentally compromised boys to her apartment for sex.”

  “But your brother’s a grown man.”

  “Physically, perhaps, but….” He stopped and seemed to shake the thought from his head. “Listen. I’m not opposed to Benny getting lucky with a woman, just the right kind of woman, someone his own age without weird secrets. He’s fragile. He needs someone gentler.”

  I saw Carlos look over at me, and then down at his watch. I knew what that meant so I gave him the nod. He folded his notepad and slipped it back into his pocket. “Mister Rivera.” He started to his feet. “I want to thank you for your time.”

  Rivera stood, and I followed. “You’re entirely welcome.” He offered us a departing handshake, which Carlos and I accepted. “If I can assist you further gentlemen, don’t hesitate—”

  “Actually, you may,” I told him. Carlos and he froze in mid-handshake to look at me. “I understand that some of your offices here have video cameras for security.”

  Rivera gestured toward the corner up over the door. “We do. All the partners and associate lawyers have cameras in their offices. It’s partly for security reasons and partly for legal protection. There are a lot of kooks out there willing to claim something happened behind closed doors that maybe really didn’t.”

  “Do you suppose we might get a copy of the video Bridget Dean’s camera shot the night she killed herself?”

  Rivera’s brows crowded some. “You already have that, Detective.”

  “I do?”

  “The medical examiner’s office requested it the morning they removed Miss Dean’s body. Maybe you should check with them.”

  “Of course,” I said. “We’ll do that.”

  Carlos and I thanked Rivera again before
heading for the elevators. On our way down, I suggested we stop on the second floor and check out the coffee shop.

  “You want coffee?” Carlos asked. He checked his watch again.

  “I know,” I said. “It’s late for coffee. What I really want to do is ask around to see what we can find out about Anna Davalos and Ricardo Rivera’s relationship. I don’t buy it that Anna killed herself because she was unstable. If anything, after meeting that pertinacious twerp, I would think she’d have killed him.”

  We stepped off the elevator and found ourselves staring directly across the hall at the coffee shop. It was mid-afternoon, so we missed the lunch crowd, but with a building that size there were still plenty of people there, snacking and taking coffee breaks.

  We entered the shop and claimed a small table by a window overlooking a duck pond. I expected we’d only order some iced tea or a Coke, but Carlos, with his ever-ferocious appetite, picked up a menu and started leafing through it. I reached across the table and snatched it from his hands.

  “Carlos, you just ate a couple of hours ago. You can’t possibly be hungry again.”

  “Well, it’s not like I’m starving,” he explained. “But Lilith came in and I never finished my extra meatballs.”

  A more reasonable excuse I’ve never heard. I handed the menu back and directed my gaze out the window. Out on the pond, a mother duck with her spring brood paddled blissfully along the water’s edge. It made me think of the small lake behind the research center and the gazebo where my last case really began to spiral out of control. I thought of an unusually talented group of individuals that somehow lost their way and began turning on one another. And about Lilith Adams, whose complicity in that case is both the origin of my sleepless nights and the reason I’m alive today.

  I began to hear the voices of doubt in my head again. Did I really want to be there, helping Carlos, maybe steering him blindly down a road he might not otherwise take?

  He did all right interviewing Ricardo Rivera. And as far as taking Dominic Spinelli under his wing, well, I could not have made a better choice myself. I looked at my watch and wondered if I still had time to catch the afternoon flight back to Florida. That’s when Courtney came into our lives and changed everything.

  “Hello!” said this jaunty young woman, spirited as a puppy and damn near as cute. “I’m Courtney. I’ll be your server today. Can I start you two gentlemen off with something to drink?”

  She reminded me a bit of Natalie down at the Percolator, only Natalie’s hair is blond (natural), and this girl’s was more auburn. I pinned her age at around nineteen, twenty max, single (no ring) and probably no kids either, not with the body of a cheerleader and breasts like perky little plums.

  “Hi, Courtney,” I said. “I’ll have an iced tea please, sweetened.”

  “And I’ll have the tuna melt,” said Carlos. “With chips and a Coke, thank you.”

  “Would you like fries with that?” Courtney asked.

  I could tell Carlos was disappointed that the fries didn’t already come with it. He looked over at me to gauge my reaction. What could I do? I gave him a smirk and shook my head as though to say, I don’t know about you, Carlos. It’s your heart attack. He rolled his eyes up at Courtney, “Nah, I better not. I gotta watch the old figure. I’ve been working out, you know.”

  She smiled like a veteran politician. “Yes, it shows,” she schmoozed. “You looked pumped.”

  “Really?”

  “Oh, yeah, totally.”

  Carlos straightened up like a cobra. “Why, thank you.”

  “Sure. You bet, hon. I’ll go get those orders in now and have your drinks here in a jiff.”

  As she walked away, I reached across the table and slapped Carlos on the arm. “You’ve been working out?”

  He puffed out his chest. “I used to. I mean, I still do once in a while.”

  “C`mon, give it a rest. She’s obviously sucking up.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She’s playing you for a bigger tip. How does she know your workouts are showing? She’s never seen you before.”

  “People can tell.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What?”

  “Listen, aside from her barely legal ass, did you notice anything else about Courtney?”

  “You mean her—”

  “Not her tits.”

  “Oh. Well, then no.”

  “You didn’t see that necklace?”

  “What necklace?”

  “The one with the pendant.”

  “Pennant?”

  “No! Pendant! Carlos, for crying out loud. I’d expect this from Spinelli. I’m talking about that little gold pendant hanging from her necklace. It’s a broken heart, the opposite of the one on Rivera’s pinky ring.”

  “Oh, yeah I saw that. Hey did you see his diamond tie clip? Man, I bet you can—”

  “Carlos. Concentrate!”

  “All right, I’m concentrating.” He sat back and made a face like someone trying to divide one hundred and seventeen by sixteen and three-quarters.

  “Carlos, it’s obvious. Ricardo Rivera comes down to this coffee shop all the time. He’s admitted he had a relationship with Anna Davalos, who just happened to waitress here. What do you suppose the chances are that he’s also seeing Courtney?”

  Now the light bulb went off in his head. “Right. I see. He’s got a ring with a broken heart on it, and she’s got the other half on a chain.”

  “Now you get it.”

  “Do you want me to ask her about Rivera?”

  “No. Better let me do it. You follow my lead.”

  Courtney returned to the table with our drinks and delivered them with a practiced smile. As she turned to leave, I called her back.

  “Is something wrong?” she asked.

  “No. Everything’s fine,” I said. “But I was wondering. My associate and I came here to talk to a lawyer about a case we’re working on.”

  “Oh, are you lawyers, too?”

  “Not exactly. We sort of work with lawyers in our line of business. Now, if we were to go upstairs and ask for the best lawyer in the company, who would we ask for?”

  “Well, that depends,” she said, without hesitation. “Is money an issue?”

  “No.” I looked at Carlos. “Money is no issue. Is it, Mister Rodriquez?”

  He waved his hands with fluttering fingers, as if dismissing the question as ridiculous. “Sir, you embarrass me. Do I look like money is an issue to me?”

  I thinned my lips and shot him a look to tone it down. If the girl had any maturity behind her fluttering eyes, she would have known that Carlos bought his suits off the rack at Macy’s. I turned to Courtney and rigged my thinning lips into a smile. “Money,” I said, “is not an issue for my associate or me. We would like to know who you consider the best lawyer in the building, regardless of fee.”

  “Then that’s easy. You want one of the partners.”

  Her answer nearly floored me. “You mean Hartman, Pierce or Petruzelli?”

  “Heavens no. I mean the other partner, Mister Rivera.”

  “Rivera, Rivera, I don’t recall his name outside on the building.”

  “Oh, but it’s not,” she said.

  “But you said—”

  “Not yet anyway, but soon. Mister Rivera is expecting an offer for partnership any day now.”

  “Is that right? Well, good for him. But you know I thought someone else was getting the job.” I looked at Carlos with a modified frown. “Mister Rodriquez, didn’t we read somewhere that the firm had offered partnership to a woman?”

  “I think we did.”

  “What was her name? Do you remember?”

  “It was Dell, or Devons, or something like that.”

  “You mean, Dean?” Courtney offered. “Bridget Dean?”

  “Dean! Yes, I do believe that’s it.”

  “Yes, well forget about her,” she said coldly. “Dean is out of the way now. Ricardo’s getting the partnersh
ip.”

  “Ricardo?”

  “I mean, Mister Rivera.”

  “I see. I suppose he’s equally qualified.”

  “More,” she said, just a little insulted. “Mister Rivera is the smartest, most talented lawyer this town has ever seen.”

  “Is he? So, you like him?”

  She reeled back with a smitten look, her fingers teasing the dimpled cleft in her chin. “Like him?”

  “Oh, I don’t mean like that, of course. I mean, as lawyers go, you favor him above the others.”

  Her expression softened, and both Carlos and I watched her petite chest rise and fall with her sigh. “Yes, I do. Now, if there isn’t anything else gentlemen, I have to go look after your order.”

  “Oh, just one more thing,” I said. She had already started away. When she turned around, I could see she had rolled her eyes up at the ceiling, only they hadn’t fully dropped forward in time for us not to notice. I smiled at that, and she grimaced at the little faux pas.

  “Don’t worry,” I told her. “I’ll make this one quick. My associate and I came here a few weeks ago, and a lovely young woman waited on us. I believe her name was Anna. Is she here now?”

  “Anna?”

  “Yes. We believe that’s her name. You see, we forgot to leave her a tip, and so now we want to make it right.”

  “Anna is…. She’s not here.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah, she moved away, I think.”

  “You think she moved?”

  “Yes. She moved.”

  “Do you know where?”

  “Alabama. Back to her family.”

  “Really? How strange, I never noticed she had a southern accent.”

  “Oh, did I say Alabama? I meant…Alaska, yes, but she left no forwarding address.”

  “Hmm, that’s too bad. All right. Thank you for your time, Courtney.”

  She turned and hurried off into the kitchen. Moments later, another server emerged with Carlos’ sandwich and brought it to our table. This girl looked even younger than Courtney. I looked for any jewelry sporting half a broken heart and felt a sense of relief to find none.

  “What happened to Courtney?” I asked.

  “She went home,” the girl replied.

  “Not feeling well?”

  She shook her head. “No, I feel fine. But thanks for asking.”

  I let it go at that.

  Four

  I let Carlos drive us back to the justice center after the iced tea I had failed to deliver the jolt I so sorely needed to keep from falling asleep behind the wheel. I’d been up since midnight the night before, and although that’s not an unusually long time for me to stay awake, it came on the heels of four particularly sleepless nights earlier in the week.

  “We have a room back at the box with sleeping cots,” said Carlos, after assessing my lack of energy. “You’re welcome to grab a few winks when we get back.”

  “Forget it,” I told him. “You know me. I’ll get my second wind soon. In the meantime, let’s review what we know so far. What do you make of Ricardo Rivera?”

  Carlos began tapping his thumbs on the steering wheel. To me, that meant one of two things. Either he couldn’t make heads or tails of Rivera, or he was afraid his assessment would differ from mine. As it turned out, it was a little of both.

  “You know, I don’t know what to think of him. Either he’s a perfect liar, or he’s perfectly innocent. And let me tell you why. First off, he admits to not liking Bridget Dean. Now, if I killed someone, I wouldn’t want you to know that I didn’t like the person.”

  “True,” I said, “but he also mentioned how everyone disliked her.”

  “That’s my point. If everyone disliked her, than anyone could have killed her, so, he could be innocent”

  “Okay, point taken. What else?”

  “Well, he told us that he once dated Dean even before I asked him.”

  “He’s a lawyer, Carlos. He saw the question coming.”

  “But he didn’t have to volunteer that information. He could have lied about that. If I killed someone, I wouldn’t want you to know we once dated. You might think I was a begrudged lover.”

  “Maybe he is.”

  “Then he would have lied about it.”

  “All right, what about the obvious?”

  “You mean the promotion to full partnership?”

  “It’s the six hundred pound gorilla in the room.”

  “Well, that was no surprise to him. You heard him say that Bridget was sleeping with Petruzelli. He couldn’t have felt suddenly slighted by her promotion.”

  “All valid arguments,” I said, handing him credit where credit was due. “However, the examples you present to exonerate him provide equal grounds to incriminate him, as well. Case in point, their past relationship. You mentioned a begrudged lover. Imagine his rage when he learned that she only used their relationship to further her career within the firm. Compound that anger with the real possibility that she aborted his child.”

  “He never said that.”

  “No, but you saw his reaction when you asked him.” I leaned over and tapped his arm. “By the way, that was a real gamble.”

  “Asking him that?”

  “Yeah, real ballsy.”

  “Thanks. It did hit a nerve, didn’t it?”

  “Yes it did. So, add that to the equation. Then ball it all up and take it downstairs to our little miss homemaker, Courtney. Did you catch what she said about Rivera getting the promotion?”

  “What?”

  “When speaking of Bridget Dean, she said, ‘She’s out of the way now. Ricardo’s getting the partnership’. She didn’t say that she was dead or that she killed herself. She said, ‘out of the way’. That’s what you say when you’ve taken care of a problem. If you ask me, everything about this case revolves around Ricardo Rivera. And Miss Courtney? She’s in this thing up to her tight little ass—literally.”

  “What about Piakowski?”

  “What about him?”

  “Rivera admitted they were friends. If he hired Piakowski to kill Dean, wouldn’t he deny knowing him?”

  I shook my head. “He’s smarter than that. Rivera would know how easily we could tie the two together. His defense of Piakowski in his appeal is a matter of public record. He can’t bury that.”

  “Then it’s all too obvious, isn’t it? There’s just one big problem.”

  “I know. Why does Dean’s death look like a suicide?”

  “And Karen’s, too.”

  “And Anna Davalos. What’s her story?”

  The answer to question number three awaited us back at the justice center. Questions one and two would have to wait a little longer.

  Carlos and I ran into Spinelli out in the parking lot the moment we pulled in. I say that barely figuratively, as Carlos almost hit Spinelli’s car angling for the same parking space. We all walked back to Carlos’ workstation together, Spinelli, catching us up on Anna Davalos as we wound our way down the halls past security.

  “Her name was Anna Marie Davalos,” Spinelli said, reading off a multi-colored sheet of paper with a thumbnail picture of Anna on the top. “Twenty-eight-years old. Born in Cuba. Became an American citizen at age eighteen. Occupation: waitress. Hobbies are reading, biking, morning jogs and romantic comedies. Turn-ons: men in business suits, fast cars and slow dancing. Turn-offs: bitchy co-workers, hip-hop, and men who drink. Strong points: smart, bi-lingual and thrifty. Weak points: rude, hot-tempered, sassy and insensitive.”

  He finished up with ‘sassy and insensitive’ just as we reached Carlos’ workstation. It didn’t seem right to sit down, and yet a round of applause didn’t quite cut it, either. I looked at Carlos and asked, “Does he do this all the time?”

  He smiled smugly. “He is amazing, isn’t he?”

  “Spinelli, where did you get all that information?”

  He turned the paper over and showed me. “She has a page on Blog-Hog.”

  “She posted tha
t information about herself?”

  “Yeah, well, the personal stuff about where she came from: occupation, hobbies, turn-ons and turn-offs. The stuff about her being rude, sassy and insensitive, I got from interviewing her friends.”

  “Her friends said those things?”

  “Yeah, go figure. You know, she really wasn’t that well liked. Her boss had good things to say about her, though. She was punctual, good-natured to customers, especially to the big tippers. She seemed to know who they were and always anticipated their needs. And her ability to read her co-workers proved uncanny. That’s the reason everyone else hated her. Despite what they said to her face, she always knew what they really thought about her.”

  Carlos and I sat down. “Speaking of co-workers, you didn’t happen to talk to Courtney, did you?”

  “Courtney Lusk?”

  “Is there another Courtney there?”

  “No.”

  “Then yes.”

  He snapped his head back and smiled suspiciously. “How do you know her?”

  “We talked to her,” said Carlos. “Only she wasn’t so forthcoming with information about Anna with us. Did you tell her who you were?”

  “No, I told her Anna owed me money. She couldn’t wait to tell me she was dead.”

  I turned to Carlos. “Were we talking to the same girl?”

  “It’s the generation gap,” he said. “Kids today, they’re on the same skiff.”

  “What else did she tell you?”

  Spinelli rolled his eyes. “Ho, boy, plenty. She told me she was dating Ricardo.”

  “Who? Courtney or Anna?”

  “Both. Apparently, that’s the major rivalry between the two girls. Rivera’s been dating Courtney and Anna on and off for as long as the two have been working there. He gets with one, grows tired of her after a while and then goes back to the other. In-between, he works on the rest of the girls in the server pool. He’s got them lined up like a softball roster.”

  “What a player,” I said. “I don’t believe the guy. What does he do when he reaches the bottom of the batting order, start at the top again?”

  “Not if Courtney gets things her way. That girl has her sites locked in tight. She told me she fully expects to get back with Rivera for good now that Anna is out of the way.”

  “She told you that?”

  “Yup.”

  “And she used the phrase, ‘Out of the way’? Carlos, are you listening to this?”

  “I told you, Tony, it’s the generation thing. Young people tell other young people everything.”

  I laughed. “Well, if that’s the case then why don’t older folks tell other old folks everything?”

  “Experience.”

  “Experience? Or paranoia?”

  He threw his hands up. “Pick your poison.”

  I said to Spinelli. “What did you find out about Anna’s suicide?”

  He gave me a half shrug and shook his head. “The medical examiner hasn’t filed his final report yet, but I know a girl in his office, Theresa. What she said, and what I confirmed independently, is that Anna went to work the day of her suicide. She only worked a half-shift, though. Co-workers told me she was excited about going straight to the car dealership to put a deposit on a new car, which she did. I verified that with the dealer. Later that afternoon, she confirmed an appointment with her dentist, picked up her dry-cleaning and stopped at the ATM for some cash. There’s a few hours where I couldn’t verify her activities, but––and this is from the coroner’s upcoming report––around eight o’clock that evening, she prepared a hot bath, climbed into it, still in her nightgown, and then slit her wrists. She bled to death within minutes.”

  I looked at Carlos. His face drew long and blank. “What do you make of that?” I asked.

  His expression barely changed. “Sounds to me like, up to eight o’clock, this girl definitely was not planning on killing herself.”

  I agreed, and then asked Spinelli, “Were there no signs of foul play?”

  He pulled a small notepad from his shirt pocket. I noticed it looked identical to the one Carlos carried. He flipped the first page open and read the name, “Ida Reynolds.”

  “Ida who?”

  “That’s who noticed it.”

  “Noticed what?”

  “Water pouring from her ceiling, apparently coming from the apartment above hers.”

  “Anna still had the bath running?”

  “Yes. So, Ida called the landlord, who used his key to enter the apartment and….”

  “And they found Anna in the tub,” I said.

  “That’s it. No sign of foul play, forced entry, struggle—nothing.”

  “It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Nothing about this case makes sense,” said Carlos. “That’s why I called you.”

  I felt myself shrinking back in my chair. “Yeah, thanks for the vote of confidence, but I’m not sure we’ll ever put the pieces of this one together.” I said to Spinelli. “Nice work, kid.”

  He seemed duly rewarded by it. “Thanks.”

  “Got anything else?”

  He checked his notes. “Yes, I do. You asked me to work on getting that videotape from Dean’s office.”

  “The security tapes, right.”

  “Well, it turns out we already have it. I located a copy at the coroner’s office. Again, my girl Theresa is working on getting it sent up.”

  “How long will that take?”

  “It shouldn’t take—”

  “Spinelli!”

  We all turned at the same time. A uniformed officer from downstairs hailed us from the hall. Spinelli waved him into the work area. “Bruce. Hey! Let me introduce you.”

  “No need,” he said, smiling. “I know Detective Rodriquez.” He put his hand out and they shook. “And Detective Marcella, how are you? I thought you retired to Florida.”

  “Officer Bruce Burke,” I said, smiling. I stood and gave him a hug, remembering the circumstances surrounding our last meeting. “I’m fine, and I did,” I said. “I came back to see if Rodriquez would take me fishing at his cottage. How’s things with you?”

  “Better.”

  “Wife and kids?”

  “All fine. Thanks.”

  We stood a moment longer, lost in an awkward silence. Then he mentioned the one damn thing I didn’t want anyone to mention as long as I was there.

  “Listen, about Doctor Lieberman,” he said. “I know we never caught his killer’s. I just wanted to say….”

  “No, don’t. It wasn’t your fault.”

  “But I left my post that night. I should have….”

  “You followed procedure. You radioed in; you received permission to terminate your watch. You did everything you could. I don’t want to hear another word about it.” I looked down at his hand and noticed him carrying a large manila envelope. “What’cha got there?”

  He looked at the envelope and then at Spinelli. “A courier from the coroner’s office left this downstairs for you.”

  “The tape!” said Spinelli. “Thanks.” He took the envelope and tore into it like a kid on Christmas morning. “Yes! It’s the Dean tape. All right!”

  “Bridget Dean?” Burke asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “You know anything about the case?”

  He scoffed. “Just that I don’t think it was suicide.”

  We three exchanged glances before turning our curiosity back to Burke. “Why do you say that?”

  “Well, forget that it was one of three suicides in such a short period. That alone is strange. But everyone knows how badly that guy, Rivera, wanted the promotion that she got.”

  I agreed, adding, “That’s why we have the tape. We want to take a closer look at it ourselves. What do you know about the other suicides?”

  “Well, I know that Karen’s death occurred in precinct one’s jurisdiction, but as you know, we all work out of the same building now. The precincts are all going to melt back into one super-precinct soon anyway.”

/>   “I heard that,” I said, “but continue.”

  “My buddy, Mike, got the call: a woman jumper. He recognized the address as Karen’s. He phoned my cell and alerted me right away. We arrived on scene at the same time. I took one look at the woman. We found her face-down, but neither Mike nor I had any doubts.”

  “Did you go up into her apartment?”

  “Yes. About then two more units rolled up, just as a man identifying himself as the building super approached us. He recognized Karen’s body, too, and offered to let us into her apartment.”

  “Was the door locked from the inside?”

  “It was.”

  “So he unlocked it and you went in.”

  “He unlocked it, but Karen had the security chain latched. I had to throw my shoulder into it—busted the doorjamb all to pieces.”

  “Guess that answers that,” said Carlos.

  “What?”

  “We were wondering whether someone could have broken in, forced Karen off the balcony and then locked the deadbolt behind him when he left. But if that chain was already in place when you arrived….”

  “Oh, it was on there, sturdy too. I got the bruises on my shoulder to prove it.”

  “Then there couldn’t have been anyone in the apartment when she jumped,” I said.

  “Not unless he went over the balcony after her.”

  “And that’s impossible,” Carlos added. “The kids out in the street who saw Karen jump would have seen someone climbing down behind her.”

  “Maybe the kids did it!” Spinelli offered. God love him for trying.

  “Yeah, and maybe Karen just jumped,” I said. “You know, cops do have one of the highest suicide rates in the country.” I reached out and shook Burke’s hand. “Thanks for the info. It’s good seeing you. Give my regards to the missus, will you?” He promised he would, and then gave a choppy sort of salute wave to Carlos and Spinelli before leaving.

  I had been on cases before that offered high hopes, but delivered dead ends. This one was different. This one offered no high hopes, only the dead ends. At the risk of setting ourselves up for another fall, I suggested we look at the videotape.

  Carlos told me about a room down the hall where they set up all the latest in audio-video technology. It was a good thing, too, because the videotape I expected wasn’t videotape at all. It was a memory cartridge, of sorts, with digital video imprints copied from a hard drive down at the Hartman, Pierce and Petruzelli building.

  The concept proved completely foreign to me. It’s not that I’m opposed to new technologies, but things like that make me glad I retired from detective work when I did. Carlos claims to understand it all, and probably does, somewhat, but it was Spinelli who wielded total command over the complex high-tech equipment there.

  “They gave us a lot of footage,” he said, using antiquated terminology solely for my benefit. “But I’ve got a queue-up number here, so it’ll get us right to the target point with no delay.”

  I turned to Carlos. “Do you understand what he just said?”

  He nodded and made a face designed to make me feel stupid. “It’s child’s play, Tony. Anyone can figure it out.”

  “Sure,” I said. I had him figured out. And I figured I’d see him pay for dinner before the night was through.

  In a matter of seconds, we were watching high resolution colored video of Bridget Dean working behind her desk in her office. The camera angle, as was the case in Rivera’s office, appeared just above the door, facing her desk. The start time and date stamp in the corner indicated April, 7th. 9:03 p.m. No sound accompanied the video, but none was needed.

  “Look at her,” said Carlos. “Nine o’clock on a Friday evening. What a workaholic.”

  Spinelli said, “The coroner’s report said she was working alone in the building that night.”

  “Yeah well, unless she’s writing a suicide note,” I replied, “she doesn’t appear to me like a woman about to commit suicide.”

  Then a strange thing happened. The video image shuddered and went static, though it did not black out completely. It only lasted a couple of seconds, but at that instant, Bridget Dean stopped and looked up from her work. She stared toward the door and appeared to mouth the words, ‘Who’s there?’ Carlos and I leaned in closer to the screen. Bridget put down her pen, opened a desk drawer and took out a gun.

  We watched, awestruck, as she came around the desk, the gun clearly pointing in front of her. She stepped hesitantly, almost tiptoeing. Before long, she had walked out of the camera’s view. Next, we saw a muzzle flash reflecting off the blackened window behind her desk, and then her body fell to the floor, just partially within camera view again.

  Spinelli let the video run another thirty seconds or so before shutting it off.

  “That’s it,” he said, leaving us both speechless and numb. “She lay there another five hours before a cleaning crew came in and found her.”

  “There has to be more,” I said. “Bridget Dean definitely saw someone.”

  “Or something,” Spinelli replied. “There are more videos. Investigators have pored over hours of tapes from dozens of cameras, including the ones out in the hall and the offices adjacent to hers. Bridget Dean was alone in that building up until the moment she died.”

  “Damn it!” I said. Almost without realizing it, I reeled around and punched a hole in the wall out of sheer frustration. Spinelli sprang back, shocked. Carlos hurried to me. He tried putting his arm around my shoulder, but I shrugged it off.

  “Tony! What’s gotten into you?”

  Already, I had forced composure upon myself. “I’m fine,” I told him. “Leave me alone. I’ll pay to repair the hole in the wall.”

  “But, I don’t get it.”

  “What’s to get? I told you I’m fine.” I crossed the room, pulled up a chair in the corner and sat down with my head in my hands. Spinelli started to follow, but Carlos held his hand up to stop him. He gave me a minute, then came over and pulled a chair up next to me.

  “You want to talk?”

  I didn’t look at him. I just shook my head and kept my eyes on the diamond patterns in the carpet. “No. I’m fine now. I lost my cool, is all. I’m sorry.”

  “You’re not fine, Tony. You’re like an old snapping turtle. You almost took Lilith’s head off at The Percolator today, and now this. That’s not like you.”

  “She got on my nerves.”

  “She gets on everyone’s nerves. She’s Lilith. But she’s never riled you like that before. So come on, we’re buddies. We’ve worked together for what, thirty years? Tell me what’s up.”

  “I can’t. I don’t know what’s up. That’s the problem. You remember how bad it got right after our last case.”

  I saw him nod through the corner of my eye. “Oh, it wasn’t that bad.”

  “Not after we freed Leona, maybe,” I said. “Hell, I was on such a high after that. But later, when I realized I had nothing on Lilith, and we failed to find Doctor Lowell’s remains.”

  Carlos said, “We know what happened to him and Jean.”

  “Yes, but we couldn’t put it in the report. Gordon killed himself, so we couldn’t put him on trial for murdering Lieberman. Then there were Michael and Valerie’s mutilated bodies in the woods. They disappeared. None of that ever got resolved, on paper anyway. As far as the people of New Castle are concerned, we still have a serial killer out there somewhere.”

  “But we don’t, and we know it.”

  “Yes, but they don’t know it.”

  I felt his hand on my back. “So, that’s it, is it?”

  “What’s it?”

  “It’s a legacy issue. The Surgeon Stalker was your biggest case ever, and on paper you couldn’t solve it.”

  “No, Carlos. That’s not it at all.”

  “Well, then what? Why the hell are you so irritable? Why can’t you eat or sleep. Why can’t you give Lilith that stupid witch’s ladder?”

  I turned my head to him abruptly, but didn�
��t say anything.

  “That’s right,” he said. “I know you still have it. But you heard Dominic. It’s just a string of beads now. It’s useless, except that it reminds you of the Surgeon Stalker. If not for that, then maybe you could get some sleep. Unless you want to remember the Stalker, is that it? Is that why you still have it? You need it?”

  “No! I don’t need it, and it doesn’t remind me of the Stalker.”

  “Then whom? Leona? Are you keeping it as a memento, because it reminds you of her, and how, if not for you, she would have suffered a fate worse than death?”

  “No!”

  “Is it Lilith? Are you….”

  I turned my eyes away in guilty denial.

  “Oh, wow,” he said, as though it should have surprised him. “You are. You’re holding onto that ladder because it’s the only thing tying you to Lilith Adams. But why, Tony? Why can’t you let go?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know, Carlos. Damn it! Don’t you see, I just don’t….” I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Look. Whatever my issues, I’ll work through them. In the meantime, we have to decide if there’s a case here or not.”

  “Fine,” he said, slapping my knee, and apparently dismissing my troubles with obvious ease. If only I could do the same, I thought. He waved Spinelli over, and together we formed a loose huddle. “So, what do we do now?” he asked.

  “For now,” I said, “let’s assume we have a case. We’re totally lacking evidence, but we have suspects, motives, victims and opportunities. What we need to do is build a scenario and then try to fill in the blanks.”

  “I have a theory,” said Spinelli.

  “Let’s hear it.”

  “All right. It goes like this. Ricardo Rivera decided to kill Bridget Dean because she got the promotion he felt he deserved. So he recruited someone he knew could do the job.”

  “Piakowski,” said Carlos.

  “Right, Gregory Piakowski, his old high school pal, whom, it just so happens, owes Rivera big for getting him off on charges of capital murder. You with me so far?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I think Carlos and I have entertained that idea already. How do you figure Anna Davalos’ death fits in all of this?”

  “Jealousy: the oldest motive in the book. The way I see it, either Rivera told Courtney about his plans for Bridget Dean, or Courtney overheard him and Piakowski planning the murder.”

  “I’d believe the latter,” Carlos remarked. “Ricardo Rivera is too smart to let anyone in on a secret like that, even a lover, and especially a flake like Courtney. Look how much trouble she had keeping information to herself when questioned by you and Tony.”

  “I’m good with that,” Spinelli replied. “The important thing is that I believe she found out. Once armed with that knowledge, she blackmailed Rivera into killing her rival, Anna Davalos. That way she could have Rivera all to herself.”

  “Excuse me,” I said, “but why wouldn’t Rivera just kill Courtney, instead? You get rid of her; you get rid of a loose cannon and silence a potential tattletale.”

  “Are you kidding? Have you seen Courtney Lusk? Killing her would be like destroying a Michelangelo. The girl’s a work of art.”

  “More like a piece of work,” I replied. “I’m sorry, but I don’t give Courtney that much credit. She lacks the initiative. I’d sooner believe that Anna Davalos found out Rivera murdered Dean, and then she tried to blackmail him into leaving Courtney. Faced with blackmail, Rivera had no choice but to kill her.”

  Carlos and I differed on that view, but we had seen wilder outcomes in affairs of the heart. Love, sex and all matters in-between often yield unpredictable consequences. Regardless of technicalities, I apologized for the interruption and asked Spinelli to continue. He cleared his throat and proceeded.

  “One suicide may look perfectly innocent to the average cop—especially if it appears cut-and-dry on video. But add another suicide: a woman from the same office building, and a cop like Karen Webber will start asking questions. When that happens, you have another problem. And if you’re Ricardo Rivera and Gregory Piakowski, you do what you have to do; you make the other problem go away.”

  “By killing Karen Webber,” Carlos concluded.

  “Exactly.” Spinelli stood with arms splayed to receive his review. I looked at Carlos, whose face I can usually read with no problem, but this time I had nothing. I asked him, “So, what do you think?”

  He gestured ambiguously, and for a moment, I thought maybe he didn’t want to speculate. Then he turned his palms up empty and said frankly, “It beats what I had.”

  “Which was?”

  “After watching the video, I thought the three probably did commit suicide, but what Dominic says isn’t bad. It’s got me thinking again.”

  I turned to Spinelli. “Not me. Nice try kid, but your theory is full of holes. You have to plug some of`em up. Why don’t you go through that video again and see if you can’t find something we can use.”

  “Thanks, will do,” he said, turned and walked off.

  I waited until he was gone before remarking to Carlos, “The kid acts like I handed him a compliment. Does he not get it that I just shot him down?”

  “Did you?”

  “I thought I did.”

  “But you did say nice try.”

  “I was being facetious.”

  “No, you were being condescending.”

  I stared back at him, blinking in disbelief. “So how is that better?”

  “It isn’t, but so you know, he’s the one who was being facetious.”

  I looked over my shoulder, but the kid was gone. I could feel the stress and fatigue beginning to work on my last nerve, so I decided to call it a day and find a hotel room where I could grab a hot shower and maybe something to eat. Though the thought of eating still made me queasy, I was never one to think straight on an empty stomach, and every indication told me that I definitely wasn’t thinking straight.

  Carlos offered me a bunk at his place, but I knew better. He likes to stay up late watching infomercials, crunching potato chips and picking his feet. When he did finally sleep, he snored like a grizzly. I thanked him for the offer and headed out.

  In the old days, we had only one real hotel in town, called the Minute Man, which offered a pool with Jacuzzi, cable TV and a view of the swamp. Now there are lots of places to stay—places where air-conditioning works and hookers don’t. But they’re not for me. I don’t need AC in April, and though I don’t employ them, the hookers don’t bother me. I even know most by name. So, I took a taxi to the Minute Man and I booked myself a room.

  I ran into an old acquaintance there, a guy named Mike Riley. He recently married, but his marriage was on the skids now. Can’t say I was surprised to hear that. A while back, he blew up his farmhouse and burned his girlfriend’s house to the ground. Doctors said it was something in the water, and that he was okay now, but you could have fooled me.

  We ate dinner together in the hotel restaurant. The entire time he kept disciplining his little brother, Patrick. Harmless enough, you might think. Except that Patrick has been dead for over thirty years.

  After dinner, he offered to buy me a couple of drinks at the bar. I respectfully declined, explaining that I had business to attend to in the morning. He said he understood. Then he did something I’ll never forget. He leaned his ear down to…well, his brother I suppose, and he came up with a word of advise. “Don’t let it eat at you,” he said.

  I smiled awkwardly, blinking back my surprise. “What?”

  “We all have demons. Some are all around us, others only in our heads….” He leaned his ear down again and came up smiling. “Oh, yeah, and some are in our dreams. But they don’t define who you are, so let them go. Don’t let them eat at you.”

  “All right,” I said, half-smiling. “Thanks, and…um, take care.”

  I turned away, and as soon as I thought it was safe to do so, I looked back over my shoulder. I saw him walking towards his room, his a
rm by his side, though reaching slightly, as if holding someone’s hand. I understood then, he was right. We all have demons. The difference is in how we deal with them.

  I slept better that night, except for that one damn dream. Doctor Lowell had me tied to the tree again, but this time Lilith was also tied up with me. She kept calling for that damn witch’s ladder, but I wouldn’t give it to her.

  “I can free us!” she hollered. Doctor Lowell moved in closer, his butcher knife raised and gleaming in the full moonlight. “Let me have it, Detective. Now!”

  I reached into my pocket. The ropes fell away like paper ribbons. Next thing I knew, the witch’s ladder appeared in my hand. I shook it violently and the beads spilled to the ground. Lilith’s ropes were still bound tightly, but she knew that mine were loose. She pleaded for me to scoop the beads up and give them to her.

  “We’ll die!” she cried. “We’ll die together!”

  I held the bare string dangling in the wind. Lilith’s sobs echoed in my ears. Then it occurred to me, I didn’t want freedom. I wanted Lilith. Better still, I wanted to meet my demise with the witch who had outsmarted me. I closed my eyes and….

  I awoke in a sweat, my heart pounding, my hands trembling. I wanted a grapefruit and guava so badly, but in New Castle, I realized that was probably against the law. I thought of getting up and going out for coffee. Instead, I closed my eyes and sleep arrested me once more. I didn’t awake again till morning.

  Five

  What a difference a day makes. I’ve heard that saying before and thought, what a crock. But it’s true. After a real dinner and a relatively sleep-filled night, I was feeling on top of the world. I phoned Carlos, who met me at the Minute Man restaurant for toast and coffee. He told me that Spinelli had some big news waiting for us at the box (his words, not mine).

  “Any idea what kind of news?” I asked him.

  He shoveled a forkful of French toast into his mouth just as I asked. He does that often, I’ve noticed. Once food is on its way to his mouth, there’s no stopping it. If Carlos was on an airplane spiraling down to Earth, and a microwave burrito touched his lips, he would have to go for it. I sipped my coffee and waited patiently for him to stop chewing. The answer came at the bottom of my cup.

  “Something about Piakowski,” he said, “and the video.”

  “He’s got a video of Piakowski?”

  Another payload of French toast left his plate, but this time I was ready. I stretched my hand across the table and intercepted his fork mid-flight. It left him dazed, his jaw unhinged and maple syrup oozing from his toast like a bloody stump. He closed his mouth and swallowed, before giving me a wounded look. “You didn’t have to do that.”

  “I know. I’m sorry it’s come to this. But tell me, does he or doesn’t he have a video of Piakowski?”

  “Who?”

  “Spinelli!”

  “No. He has information about Piakowski. The video news has got something to do with the one we watched last night: the one with Bridget Dean.”

  I let go of his hand and the French toast landed squarely in his mouth. Mission accomplished. Carlos’ breakfast afforded me time for three cups of coffee and a brisk review of the New Castle Times. I saw an article there that mentioned Karen Webber's’ upcoming funeral. My mind flashed back to the day nearly a year ago when Karen stood in the rain at the funeral of her brother, Travis. It saddened and softened my heart to think they were together again.

  Carlos finished his breakfast, and on a promise that he wouldn’t go for dessert, I paid the tab. We were climbing into the car when I heard my name called. I looked back at the restaurant and saw Mike Riley heading in.

  “Who’s that?” Carlos asked.

  “Never mind,” I said, “just drive. Drive!”

  As we pulled out, I waved to Riley and then pointed at my watch. “Gotta go,” I mouthed through the closed window. “Gotta go, you poor sick bastard.”

  We got to the box (yeah, I know. He got me saying that, too), about ten minutes later. Four minutes after that, we had cleared all layers of security and were standing with Spinelli in the media room. Spinelli couldn’t wait to get started.

  “Where were you?” he asked Carlos, hopping about as though he had to pee. “I thought you were just going to the hotel to pick up Detective Marcella?”

  I saw Carlos discreetly wipe a sticky syrup spot from the corner of his mouth, as if to scratch an itch. “I know. We were going to come straight here, but we had to, ahm….”

  “My razor broke,” I said. “We had to go buy a new one, and then drive back to my room so I could shave. Sorry for making you wait.”

  “Oh no problem,” he said, dismissing any inconvenience. “You could keep me waiting all day. I wouldn’t mind at all.”

  I think Carlos was about to say something, offended as he was, but I pointed tactfully to the spot on his mouth that he had just wiped clean. He faded back and turned away to wipe it again.

  I said to Spinelli, “So tell me, kid, what’s the big news you have for us?”

  He collected a small stack of paper clipped documents and handed them to me. “A couple of things. First of all, I did some more digging on Courtney Lusk and found that she was married, briefly. Lusk is her married name.”

  “Oh?”

  “Right out of high school she hooked up with a loser named Christopher Lusk, a guy nearly fifteen years her senior.”

  “That might explain her attraction to Rivera,” said Carlos. “She digs older men.”

  I laughed, adding, “I’m sure his money doesn’t hurt, either.”

  Spinelli continued. “Like I said, this guy was a real loser, in and out of prison his entire adult life. But that’s not the interesting part.”

  “Don’t tell me,” said Carlos. “This guy, Lusk, he’s really Piakowski.”

  “Close,” Spinelli answered, smiling at the near-hit. “Christopher Lusk isn’t Piakowski, but he was Piakowski’s cellmate at one-time and Piakowski liked him so much he introduced Lusk to his younger sister.”

  “Courtney?”

  “Yes. Courtney’s maiden name was Piakowski. She and Gregory are brother and sister. How coincidental is that?”

  “Too,” I said. “Nice work, Spinelli. Go to the head of the class.”

  “Looks like you were wrong,” said Carlos, looking smug.

  “What do you mean?”

  “This validates Dominic’s theory about Courtney involving herself in Anna Davalos’ murder.”

  “How so?”

  “Come on. You asked why Rivera wouldn’t sooner kill Courtney if she were trying to blackmail him. Now you know.”

  “Because of her brother?”

  “Of course.”

  He had a point. I could see that. However, I still wasn’t convinced that killing Anna Davalos was Courtney’s idea. I dismissed Carlos, rather rudely I’m afraid, and said to Spinelli, “What else you got?”

  “Only this.” He waved us over to the wall monitor and turned on the audio video machine. “You told me to go back to the tape of Bridget Dean and see what else I could find. I spent hours last night combing through it, only to find the most interesting part of the footage right under my nose.”

  He queued up the segment of video that we had seen the night before. He let it roll, and once again we stood there watching Bridget Dean working at her desk. We saw her set her pen down on the blotter and call out silently.

  “All right, I’m going to slow it down now,” he said. “Watch closely here.” He pointed to the window behind Dean’s desk. “It’s night time. Dean’s office overlooks the duck pond out back, so there’s nothing but black outside.” He moved his finger vertically over the window. “Watch this area closely. You see a reflection in the glass. It’s the light coming from the doorway in Dean’s office.”

  The video continued. We saw Bridget Dean reach for her gun, stand and then start for the door. Spinelli slowed the image down further.

  “Okay, here,” he said, and then froze
the image. “Look closely at the reflection of the doorway. You see that?”

  “Yes.” I moved in closer to the screen. “It looks like a figure: someone standing in the doorway.”

  “Maybe it’s Dean’s reflection,” Carlos suggested.

  Spinelli shook his head. “No. Watch this.” He started the video again, frame-by-frame. “Look here. Just as Dean walks out of the camera’s view and into the doorway, we see her reflection as distinct, separate figure.”

  “But better defined than the other,” Carlos noted.

  “Maybe it’s a bend in the glass,” I said, “distorting Dean’s image and creating a double exposure.”

  Again, Spinelli shook his head. “I don’t think so. I’ve watched this a hundred times last night. I’m going to back it up a bit and play it a little faster. This time, watch how Bridget’s reflection crosses the glass, but the movement of the second figure doesn’t mirror hers. Instead it moves independently.”

  He reversed queue and played it back at one-third speed. Although not as distinctly defined as Dean’s image, the second figure in the reflection clearly moved out of sync and independently of hers.

  “That’s it. I’ve seen enough,” I said. “Spinelli, great work. Carlos, let’s roll.”

  “Where to?”

  “Back to Hartman, Pierce and Petruzelli. I want another chat with Rivera, and I want to see Bridget Dean’s office for myself.”

  Carlos grabbed his coat and followed me out. “He’s pretty ambitious, isn’t he?” he said, as we got into his car.

  “Spinelli? Yes, he is. I think he’ll make a fine detective.”

  “He makes.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “He’s a fine detective already.”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “No, Tony, it’s not. Why are you so averse to recognizing his credentials?”

  “I recognize him. Didn’t you hear me compliment him on his good work?”

  “Complimenting one’s work is not the same as acknowledging his equality.”

  “So what might you have me do, raise a banner proclaiming him the world’s best detective?”

  “No, but you could start by inviting him out with you on these little jaunts. He looks up to you, and he’s earned it. By the way, would it kill you to call him by his first name once in awhile?”

  “That’s not me. I’m not like you. I can’t get all buddy-buddy with someone so easily. I didn’t start calling you by your first name for five years.”

  “Six. And you only started calling me Carlos then because Raul Rodriquez promoted in from traffic.”

  I grunted under my breath. He was right about that. Two Rodriquezs complicated things almost as much as four O’Briens and three O’Connors. “Look, I like Spinelli. I think he’s a good detective. He certainly has the talent and tenacity to do great things. But I’m just not a huggy-feely kind of guy. It takes me a while to warm up to people.”

  “A while? Ha! You still have Monroe down in evidence thinking you hate him because he wouldn’t give you those confiscated lobsters that time.”

  “They were going to spoil. There’s no refrigeration down there.”

  “Tony, it was evidence. He couldn’t let you have them!”

  “Yeah, and what happened to them?” Carlos buttoned up. I saw his hands twisting on the steering wheel. “Carlos?”

  “All right. They spoiled.”

  “Yes, a hundred and sixty pounds of lobsters and he had to throw them away. The guys who poached them got off scot free.”

  “That’s not the point.”

  “I know. The point is that we could have had one hell of a lobster bake.”

  “That’s not what I mean.”

  “All right. I’ll tell you what. The next time we go out, we’ll take your little friend along.”

  “Tony.”

  “Okay. We will take Detective Spinelli along. Happy?”

  He gave me a little huff. “How about just Dominic? Just the two of you? Make him feel like part of the team. Okay?”

  “Fine,” I said, and I found myself folding my arms at my chest. “He’s probably a better conversationalist anyway.”

  We arrived at the HP&P building around ten. Rivera’s secretary advised us that her boss wasn’t in, but if we wished to make an appointment, we could. We declined. I asked if we could see Bridget Dean’s office. The woman told us Ms. Dean’s office was being re-carpeted, and almost as a side thought added, “You understand.”

  Carlos and I nodded.

  On the way down in the elevator, we decided to revisit Miss Courtney Lusk. Our newly acquired information regarding her relationship with Piakowski reshaped our opinions enough to question her more aggressively. If nothing more, we hoped to ascertain clues as to the whereabouts of her brother.

  We exited the elevator on the second floor and proceeded to the coffee shop. Again, we arrived between crowds and found the place all but empty. A quick look around fed our suspicions that we had missed Courtney. We asked a young fellow pushing a broom there if he knew her schedule.

  “C…Courtney quit yesterday,” he said, his words, besides the stuttering, came out slow and deliberate.

  “Quit? Did she give a reason?”

  “I’m not sup…p-posed to talk to strangers. You would need to ask C…Courtney.”

  Carlos looked at me, his brow fixed in that, are you thinking what I’m thinking? sort of arch. I dropped a nod and said, “We’re not strangers. I’m Tony, and this is Carlos. We’re friends of your brother, Ricardo.”

  “Y…you know Ricky?”

  “Sure. You’re Benjamin, right?”

  “B…Benjamin, yeah. But my f..fr…riends call me B…Benny.”

  “Benny. That’s nice. May we call you that, too?”

  He folded his lips and contorted his mouth, the entire time mopping the floor with his eyes as he thought the question through. After deep consideration, he looked up at us and smiled. “Yeah. Y…you can call me Benny, t…too.”

  “Are you the janitor here, Benny?”

  “Y…yeah. I make it better f…for the w…women.”

  “Nice. Do you mind if I ask you a question?”

  He shook his head.

  “Do you know Courtney’s brother, Gregory?”

  “G…Greg is a bad m..m.man.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Greg makes f…fun of Benny.”

  “He teases you?”

  A nod yes.

  “Does he make fun of the way you talk?”

  Another nod.

  “Has he ever hit you?”

  “Oh, he won’t h…hit me. I know ju…judo,” He set the broom handle against his chest and struck a Kung-Fu pose with his hands slanted sharply at opposing angles.

  “I guess you do,” I said. “That’s very impressive.”

  He relaxed and smiled proudly. “He can make f…fun of me a…all he wants. “S..s..sticks and s..st..stones may break my b…bones…”

  “Yes, but names will never hurt you.”

  “Yeah. That’s what R…Ricky s..s…says.”

  “Well, your brother is a smart man, Benny.”

  “Y…yeah, h..he’s a l…lawyer, you know.”

  “I know that. Don’t we know that, Carlos?”

  “That’s right, a damn smart lawyer.”

  Benny laughed. “Yeah, d…damn sssm…mart. He tells Gr…Greg not to make f…fun of m..me all the t…time.”

  “Yeah, but like you say: sticks-n-stones. You don’t let that bother you.”

  He gave a strongman muscle flex. “J…just as long as he d…doesn’t make f…fun of m..my girlfriend.”

  “You have a girlfriend?”

  “Yeah, she’s like m..me.”

  “She likes you?”

  “No. She’s l…like me.”

  “Who’s that, Mallory?”

  “Noooo!” He blushed, and turned away briefly. “M..m.mallory is not my g..girlfriend.”

  “She’s not?” Carl
os and I exchanged curious glances. “Then, who?”

  “L…Leona.”

  “Leona?” I said, and I’m sure the astonishment in my voice even took Benny by surprise. “Leona Diaz?”

  He blushed some more. “Y…yeah, but sh..she don’t know it y…yet.” He put his finger to his lips and shushed us. “M..mums the w..word.”

  I smiled, and Benny smiled too, as if the world were a cup full of love and his alone to drink.

  “Don’t you worry,” I said, “your secret’s safe with us.” I turned to Carlos. “Ready?”

  He nodded. We waved to Benny and left.

  On the ride back to the box, we talked very little. Carlos seemed content tapping to the tunes on the radio, while I struggled to understand something Benjamin Rivera said to us moments earlier. It almost went unnoticed, and even after repeating himself, I failed to challenge it. We were just pulling into the parking lot when I asked Carlos, “What do you suppose Benny meant when he said of Leona, ‘She’s like me’?”

  “He didn’t. He said, ‘She likes me.’”

  “That’s what I thought, too, but I had him repeat it. ‘She’s like me.’ That’s what he said.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe he meant that she’s shy like him.”

  I retreated in thought. Sometimes I read too much into things. It’s a curse when that happens. But other times I truly believe I hear things that people only subconsciously want me to hear. Otherwise, they would speak their minds more clearly.

  I let Benny’s words roll around in my head for a while, and by the time we filtered through security and met up with Spinelli at the workstation, I knew what I had to do.

  “Detective Marcella! Carlos! Check this out.” Spinelli’s excitement, even for him, seemed overly animated.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  He held up a piece of paper. “Look what I found in Karen’s desk.”

  “You went through her desk?”

  “Yes. I told her supervisor I was working on a theory that Karen was murdered, and asked if I could look through her things.”

  “You shouldn’t have told him that.”

  “You’re telling me? He asked what evidence I had. When I told him none, he chewed me out up one side and down the other. Said her death was a suicide, and if I wasted one more dollar of the city’s money chasing red herrings that he would bust me down to traffic so fast my head would spin.”

  Carlos grabbed his sleeve and latched on like eagle’s talons. “You didn’t tell him that I was working with you.”

  “`Course not.”

  He let go and smiled. “That’s my boy.”

  “Apparently he still let you look in her desk,” I said.

  “Not because of that. After he shot me down, I told him I lent Karen a pen that my grandfather gave me. I said I never got it back.”

  “And he bought that?”

  “Yup. Told me next time not to make up wild ass excuses. Just go with the truth.”

  “Well,” said Carlos. “That’ll teach you. Always go with the truth that you think will work best for you at the time.”

  I put my hand out. “So, whaddaya got?”

  “It’s a list of names with notes beside each one. There’s Rivera, Dean, Piakowski, Davalos, Lusk, Edwards, and look,” he said, tapping the paper, “a new one, Carol Kessler.”

  I took the paper. “Good work, Spinelli.” Carlos shot me a look that almost cut me. I shot one back that said ‘Missed’. But he really didn’t. I looked Spinelli in the eye and dropped him a wink. “I mean, Dominic.”

  Carlos smiled. I saw Spinelli’s chest swell with pride. “Thanks,” he said, and then added hesitantly, “Tony.”

  See! My next look told Carlos. That’s why I didn’t want to do that!

  I reviewed the names and accompanying notes. For the most part, it read like a surveillance log. Her reasons for keeping it weren’t clear to me, but I suspect she thought it might come in handy under unthinkable circumstances.

  It documented the days and times that she watched Rivera and Piakowski. The small notes next to the other names were mostly references to ages, occupations and relationships, RR’s girlfriend, for instance, noted next to Courtney’s name. Beside Anna Davalos’ name, Karen had penciled in the number two, perhaps indicating second victim. Next to Carol Kessler’s, the number three with a question mark. Also beside Carol’s name was a time, perhaps an appointment: 4:30 April 7, the afternoon of Karen’s death.

  I finished reading the page and handed it to Carlos. “Do we know anything about this Kessler woman?”

  Spinelli replied, “Some. She’s white, Karen’s age, thirty-four: brown hair and eyes, weight one-forty-five, height five-foot-six, last known address is on Lexington Avenue.”

  “Good work,” I said. “Did you get all that off the Internet?”

  “No. I pulled a copy of her driver’s license. By the way, she’s an organ donor.”

  “Niiiice.”

  After reading the paper, Carlos looked up and said, “How do you suppose Carol fits into all of this?”

  “That’s what you’re going to find out,” I told him. “In the meantime, I have to go see somebody.” I grabbed my coat and started down the hall. Five steps in I turned and called back, “You coming, Spinelli?”

  He tore after me like a greyhound.

  Six

  Spinelli drove, guided by my directions, never asking where we were going. He probably assumed I would tell him if I felt he needed to know. The truth was I kept expecting him to ask. Carlos would never have gotten out of the box without prying that information out of me first. I imagined the differences in both their styles would take them far together.

  I had Spinelli pull up to the last house on the block, a pleasant little Cape Cod with shiny white vinyl siding, pleasingly trimmed in warm hues of peach and gray pastels. On the front lawn, just as I remembered, tacky little garden gnomes peeped out mischievously from behind miniature plastic windmills placed strategically along the walkway. A thin chill ran up my spine and sent goose bumps sliding down my arms.

  Spinelli, witnessing the spontaneous shudder, craned curiously out the window and asked, “Where are we?”

  “Hell,” I said, without thinking, then added, “I mean, hell if I know. Let’s go check it out?”

  “Wait. Is this Lilith’s place?”

  I smiled at his perceptiveness. “How did you know?”

  He pointed to a car in the driveway sporting a bumper sticker that read:

  FIRES DON’T BURN WITCHES, PEOPLE DO

  I laughed at that. “Yeah, she’s got an offbeat sense of humor, doesn’t she? Remember not to say anything about that wart on her nose.”

  I started out of the car, when Spinelli stopped me. “I didn’t notice a wart on her nose yesterday.”

  “No, of course, not. Yesterday she came to us as a mortal.” I gave him a classic double take. “I thought you studied the occult.”

  I stepped out and started up the walk, feeling just a little ashamed for pulling his leg like that. I used to pull Carlos’ leg all the time, too. But he got wise to me after a while. It’s harder now to pull one over on the old Cuban. However, Spinelli is new blood and you have to take advantage of something like that while you can.

  About halfway to the door I noticed Spinelli still sitting behind the wheel of the car. “Hey!” I called. “You coming or what?” He got out of the car and met me at the door. I looked at him and frowned. “Man, what took you?”

  He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “I thought maybe you’d want me to wait for you with the motor running.”

  I rubbed the top of his head. “Nice try. Now, ring the bell.”

  He reached for the doorbell, and as he did, I noticed his hand start to tremble. Incredibly, instead of ringing it for him, I found myself fighting an almost uncontrollable urge to poke him in the sides and scream, Gotcha! If he were Carlos, I probably would have. But a fright like that for a rookie can result in gunfire, and frankly I believed
we were woefully outgunned already.

  Spinelli’s finger pushed the buzzer and a pleasant little chime spilled from a carillon box on the other side of the door. I resolved to stand my ground no matter how unpleasant Lilith got, and if necessary, to throw my body in front of Spinelli’s to protect him from harm, real or imaginary.

  The door opened. I smiled, bowed my head respectfully and said, “Hello, Lilith. May we come in?” She rolled her eyes, swung the door open and trotted off. I turned to Spinelli and gestured, “After you.”

  He shook his head, took a step back and presented an unobstructed path. “Oh, no, I insist.”

  Now, I’m not one to pull rank, and I certainly wouldn’t ask a fellow officer to go where I dared not. But in my day, when a senior officer indicated a preference, extended an opportunity or simply invoked the potential of an aspiring colleague, then one did not decline gratuitously. I pushed past Spinelli, knocking him off balance but not off his feet. I am a professional after all.

  “Chicken,” I said.

  Spinelli followed.

  Lilith’s house is small. There’s no upstairs and just a couple of bedrooms down the hall. For living space, you pretty much just have the kitchen, a dinette area and a tiny living room. We found Lilith in the kitchen, working at the stove.

  “I’m making herbal tea, gentlemen. Would you like some?”

  “Ah, Lilith” I said, “ever the consummate hostess. We’d love some, thank you.”

  “Take a seat at the table then. I’ll have it served up in a sec.”

  I looked around, noticing how the place had changed little since my last visit. “You know, Lilith, you served me herbal tea the last time I was here.”

  “Oh? And you’re still alive?”

  She laughed. I saw Spinelli swallow hard at that comment.

  “I like what you’ve done with the place.”

  “I’ve done nothing, Detective.”

  “You moved some mirrors around.”

  “No, I haven’t.”

  “You painted.”

  “Uh-uh.”

  “New drapes?”

  She turned from the stove and brought three herbal teas to the table. “Detective, I’ve changed nothing. Except that I’ve put the place back together after blowing the windows out, thanks to that tantrum you set me on.”

  I snapped my fingers. “That’s it! Nice job.”

  Using a tiny set of tongs, Lilith plucked a sugar cube from a candy dish and dropped it into her tea. She passed the tongs over to me next. I helped myself to two cubes, but when I handed the tongs to Spinelli, his eyes lit up as though I had just proposed he drink a cup of Jonestown Cool-aid. Lilith, observing his reaction, offered me this: “Have you received the package of dried batwings I sent you, Detective?”

  “Yes,” I told her. “They cleared up my lumbago just as you said it would.”

  “How nice.”

  “Oh, and those eyes of newt?” I gestured toward my cup. “I dropped them into my tea just like you said.”

  “And?”

  “No more erectile dysfunction.”

  “Good, then maybe we can pick up where we left off.”

  In a calamity of misfortune, Spinelli dropped the sugar tongs by his feet, hit his head on the table when he bent over to retrieve them, and then fell completely out of his chair onto the floor.

  I scooted my chair back in haste and inadvertently set the chair leg on top of his hand. He cried out in pain. Lilith stood up quickly, bumping the table, spilling the hot tea, which then dripped off the table onto Spinelli’s head. He screamed again. I screamed. Lilith screamed. Any neighbor walking by the house would have thought a mass murder was in progress. Spinelli, likely, wasn’t so sure there wasn’t.

  Eventually, we rescued Spinelli, iced his hand and toweled his head. We were happy to evaluate his psychical wounds as purely superficial. His emotional wounds, however, I feared were probably going to scar him for life.

  After cleaning him up, we got him back to the table. I apologized for crushing his hand and Lilith for scalding his head. He said he didn’t blame us, that it was his own clumsy fault, and to keep him happy with that, Lilith and I resolved never to tell him we were only kidding about the batwings and newt eyes. It just seemed better that way.

  I sipped my tea and Lilith hers, and when our eyes met again, I knew she expected me to get down to business. So before she could say another word, I said, “Look. Here’s the thing. I know you know Karen Webber. You guys met at Travis’ funeral. I want to run a few other names by you and see what you can tell me about them. Is that okay?”

  She looked at me through slotted eyes. “Actually, Detective, I met Karen Webber long before that.”

  “Yes, I suppose you would have. You and Travis were…fairly close, being that you and he were in Doctor Lieberman's workshop the longest.”

  “No, you suppose wrong. I knew Karen even before that. But before I give you something, I still want you to give me something.”

  “The ladder.”

  “Of course.”

  “Lilith, I told you. I don’t have it. Otherwise I would give it to you. Trust me.”

  “Detective, normally I would trust you. You’ve never lied to me, yet. But I know you have it. Leona swears she left it on the nightstand next to the bed. You were the lead detective in the case. None of your people would have touched it without you knowing.”

  I slapped my hand on the table, not hard, but enough to make Spinelli jump. Lilith’s eyes only blinked and her stone-faced expression helped me reel my frustrations back into check right away. I took a deep breath, folded my hands neatly before me, and exhaled slowly.

  “Look, Lilith. I’m sorry about the outburst. I’m trying to get to the bottom of something. If you knew Karen Webber as well as you say, then you should know that Carlos, Spinelli and I believe the cause of her death wasn’t suicide.”

  Her expression softened at once. “But the papers said—”

  “The papers don’t know everything, neither do the cops. Both see things only in black and white. There’s enough circumstantial evidence to tie a string of events together, and I believe you can help us tie that string into a knot.”

  “Interesting choice of words, Detective.”

  By that, I knew she was referring to the ladder: a string of forty knots, just enough to hang myself with. I suspect my subconscious knowingly played a part in that betrayal. I ignored her comment, though, knowing she knew she got me.

  “Lilith, tell me how you knew Karen Webber, if not through her brother, Travis.”

  She took a sip of tea and gazed across the table at Spinelli. “Are you really that frightened of me, Detective Spinelli?” she asked.

  He swallowed hard and cleared his throat. “I’m not af…fraid of you, Miss Adams.”

  She thinned her lips. “So, why are you counting the steps to the front door?”

  He turned to me, his eyes wide and white. “Oh, didn’t I tell you?” I said. “Lilith reads minds. Your best bet is to think of a song and keep it in your head.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, and if you picture her in those tight blue jeans she wore yesterday, she’ll know.”

  “Too late,” said Lilith. “He’s already gone there, and then some.”

  I saw him look to Lilith, then to me, to Lilith and back again. She sipped her tea slowly, her ebony eyes peering over the top of her cup in tiny slits. I remembered how uncomfortable I felt the first time I learned that she could read my mind, and how relieved I was when she divulged the secret of how to prevent it. I was about to share that knowledge with Spinelli, when he excused himself from the table and headed for the door. I called to him and asked where he was going.

  “Out for a smoke.”

  After the door shut, I turned to Lilith. “Did you chase him out of here on purpose?”

  She scoffed. “Please, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Yes you do. I know you better than that.”

/>   “What? The boy said he wanted to go out and have a smoke. What’s the big deal?”

  “Well, first of all he doesn’t smoke.”

  She set her tea down and leaned in towards me on her elbows. I felt her warm breath on my lips, and the thought of licking them wet made me feel just a little dirty. “Detective,” she said, “there’s something about that guy.”

  I controlled the urge and swallowed. “What?”

  “That’s just it. I don’t know, and I’m a pretty good judge of character. That one is hiding something. Trust me.”

  “Lilith.” Our eyes locked. “Spinelli’s a good cop. I trust you with matters of witchcraft. I trust him with my life.”

  I thought she might come back with some clever off-the-cuff remark about him being so young, like who’s going to watch your back while he’s taking his nap? Or won’t his mommy get upset if you keep him out after dark? But she didn’t. Instead, she eased back in her chair, tossed her hair back off her shoulder and settled in with arms crossed at her chest.

  “You want to know how I knew Karen Webber?” she said. “I’ll tell you. Karen and I met in one of the early paranormal workshops.”

  “Wait a minute. Karen was in a psychic workshop with you?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And Travis, too?”

  “No. This was before Travis. This was in one of Doctor Lowell’s studies.”

  “I thought the workshops were Doctor Lieberman's projects.”

  “Uh-uh. They were strictly Doctor Lowell’s brainchild. This was before he turned the project over to Lieberman.

  “In the early days, the studies were informal. Those of us that attended had answered an ad in the newspaper. Me being into witchcraft and all, well, naturally I was interested. Doctor Lowell, it turned out, couldn’t care less about my interests in witchcraft, but he did recognize that I had a propensity for clairvoyance. What he didn’t know, and what Doctor Lieberman later found out, was that witchcraft proved an invaluable tool in developing my skills as a psychic.

  “I tell you this, because Karen Webber showed an early interest in witchery and magic, but no real traits of ESP. It was that interest in witchcraft that got us talking, and eventually we became friends. But Karen’s heart wasn’t in it. She didn’t care to fully immerse herself into the craft, and Doctor Lowell soon realized he couldn’t validate her claim of paranormal attributes. So, before long, she left the program and we lost touch with each other.”

  “Except when her brother joined the group.”

  “Yeah, but even then we didn’t keep in touch so much. Soon after Travis joined us, Karen moved to Ipswich and became a cop. I suppose I saw her maybe two or three times after that.”

  “How about a guy named Benjamin Rivera? Did you know him?”

  “Little Benny, yeah, a bit slow, and not much of a conversationalist, if you know what I m..m.mean.”

  “That’s not funny.”

  “I know. I’m sorry, but I never had the patience for such things. I’m sure Benny’s a nice guy and all, but I’m not going to make excuses. I can’t deal with….”

  “People not as smart as you?”

  “I didn’t say that. There’s plenty of smart people I can’t tolerate. Sometimes, Detective, you’re one of them.”

  I smiled at that. “Well, thank you for tolerating me today.”

  “You’re welcome. More tea?” She poured us another round and we both helped ourselves to the sugar with our fingers. “Why do you ask about Benny Rivera? Is he tangled up in your little mystery?”

  I shook my head. “Don’t know yet. At the very least, I fear he’s in danger.”

  “Sorry to hear that. He really wasn’t such a bad kid, and I do mean kid. I never thought Doctor Lowell should have let someone so young into the studies. You put a boy into a group of adults like that and you’re bound to have problems.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, forget about the rumors of little Benny being someone’s boy toy, but just the way everyone teased him about his stuttering.”

  “You mean like you?”

  “Detective, give me a little more credit than that. I say what’s on my mind at the expense of grown-ups, but I respect the little people. No, I’m talking about most everyone else. Poor Benny got an earful from people that should have known better. And I include Karen Webber among them.”

  “She teased Benny, too?”

  “She was the worst. I suppose it was the boredom, really. People think we were rewriting the laws of physics in those early studies. Most of the time we just sat around for hours, as Doctor Lowell worked one-on-one with someone trying to move a pencil across the table with thought waves. If not that, then we spent days watching someone else sit, guessing what shape ink spot lay on a card face down in a pile of other ink-spotted cards.”

  “Sounds exciting.”

  “To some, maybe, but I can see how the boredom might lead others to mischief. All that aside, how did you know Benny and I were in Doctor Lowell’s workshop together?”

  “Didn’t really. It’s something he said to me. We were talking. Leona’s name came up, and he said he was like her.”

  “You mean he likes her.”

  “No. That’s what I thought I heard, too. He said that he was like Leona.”

  “Benny—like Leona? I don’t see how. The two are about as far apart as fire and water.”

  “When he said that, I assumed he meant that he was special like her, and that maybe they met in the workshops. That’s when I thought of coming to you.”

  Lilith shook her head. “No, that’s impossible. Benny went to those workshops like eight or nine years ago. Leona came much later. Back then, she was still just a young girl in Honduras or Nicaragua, or whatever the hell banana republic she’s from.”

  “So, Benny didn’t attend the workshops for very long?”

  “Maybe a month or two. I don’t know how he got into the studies to begin with, but it didn’t take Doctor Lowell long to figure out he wasn’t psychic, just a high-functioning savant with a stuttering problem.”

  “He’s not retarded?”

  “Please, Detective, tomāto—to`mäto, I’m not going to split hairs.”

  “Your sensitivity slays me, Lilith.”

  “Yeah, but you agree. Deep down you know you do. That’s the only reason we connect. The difference is that I don’t try to hide it.”

  I wanted to disagree with her, and fundamentally, I did. But what she said about me connecting with her rang bits of truth. In another time and in another world, perhaps, and if decades did not so obviously define our age, then she and I might have found common grounds for more than a platonic relationship. “Lilith,” I said, “let me run another couple of names by you and tell me what you think.”

  She sipped her tea and readied herself by pulling her foot up on her chair and sitting on her ankle. “Okay. Shoot.”

  “I’ll start in no particular order of importance: Anna Davalos, Ricardo Rivera, Gregory Piakowski, Bridget Dean, Mallory Edwards, Courtney Lusk. Do these names mean anything to you?”

  “Some. Why do you ask?”

  “These people all worked for or have a connection to the Hartman, Pierce and Petruzelli firm downtown.”

  “Is that where Benny Rivera works?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay, that figures then. That’s how Benny knows Leona, isn’t it?”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because Leona knew Bridget Dean through Karen Webber. Bridget took Leona under her wing after that whole Surgeon Stalker thing. That’s something you would have known had you followed up on the girl’s welfare a little after the headlines died down.”

  “Hey, my life didn’t revolve strictly around that case. I had other priorities once it concluded.”

  “So good for you. Only it hasn’t really concluded, has it?”

  “What’s that supposed to—”

  “You know what it means.”

  I caught her gaz
e and held it like a viper’s grip. Of course, I knew what it meant. And I knew she had been in there again, fishing around in my mind, trolling my thoughts like a Great White in search of gobbet and chum.

  She had gotten better at it, so much so that I couldn’t know for sure if she were not in there all along. I blinked, and the connection between us broke, or she let go, I don’t know which. I sat back and felt a sense of calm, and I realized then that she owned me since the moment that thin chill ran up my spine outside in the car.

  “Are you done?” I asked.

  I thought she would ask me what that was supposed to mean, but she didn’t. She turned her head and wet her lips before taking a shallow sip of tea. Then she set her cup down on the table and folded her hands with interlocking fingers as if peace had found her, too. “Yes,” she answered. “I’m done.”

  “Then may I ask you?”

  “The other names? Of course. I know Bridget Dean the same way Karen Webber knew Bridget Dean, which is also how we both knew Anna Davalos, Benny Rivera and Carol Kessler. We all attended early versions of Doctor Lowell’s paranormal workshops.”

  “I never asked you about Carol Kessler.”

  “Come, Detective. Would you rather I hold out until you ask? We could be here all day.”

  “Fine. You’ve been in my head. Tell me what else I want to know. Tell me what I want to know even if I don’t know that I want to know it. Who don’t I know about that I should? Anyone else from those early workshops I failed to ask about?”

  “I don’t know. Let’s see. I remember Stinky Pete something or another. He dropped out after the first week. I don’t think I need to tell you why. Then we had Lucky Lenny from Southie. He had that name even before he won the lottery—three times. Ha, and Doctor L didn’t think he had any psychic abilities.”

  “Maybe he was just lucky like his nickname suggests.”

  “Yeah, Detective, I’m sure that’s it. And maybe monkeys will fly out of my butt.”

  “Anyone else?”

  “Well, we can’t forget about Crazy Eddy, now can we?”

  “Who’s he?”

  “Crazy Eddy? I’m sorry I don’t remember his last name, but as the name implies, the guy was a real whacko. He wasn’t there long, but he made one hell of an impression on us.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “I don’t know. Some say he moved away. Others say he died. Wouldn’t surprise me. Between that workshop and Doctor Lieberman's second phase workshops, nearly everybody’s dead now.”

  “And that doesn’t strike you as odd?”

  “Should it?”

  “Well, you know the reason I’m here asking all these questions is because in addition to Karen Webber’s death, this month Bridget Dean and Anna Davalos also committed suicide.”

  “I know that. What a shame.”

  “You know that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, what if I told you we suspect that Dean and Davalos were murdered, too?”

  “Then I’d say you have your hands full.”

  “But it doesn’t worry you?”

  “Again, should it?”

  “I think so. Don’t you see the relevance here? From what you’re telling me, the Hartman, Pierce and Petruzelli connection is not the only thread tying these deaths together, but there’s also the Doctors Lowell and Lieberman psychic workshops connection.”

  She drew her hand to her mouth in an exaggerated gasp. “Ooh! You mean someone is killing off members of the psychic workshop for no apparent reason?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Wow, Detective. I bet this is like déjà vu for you, huh? How do you stand it?”

  “That’s it!” I threw my hands in the air, kicked my chair out and started for the door. “You know, Lilith, if ever I thought you could take anything serious, I must have been out of my mind.”

  “Oh, don’t worry,” she said. “I’ll let you know when that happens.”

  I stormed out of her house and, I’m not proud of this, kicked the shit out of one of her stupid little gnomes peeking out from behind the windmill. He had it coming, though. I swear the little bastard gave me the finger.

  Spinelli needed no invitation. He started the car and dropped it into gear even before I climbed in and shut the door. We left rubber halfway down the block and neither of us said a word until we made it back to the box.

  Seven

  Spinelli and I ran into Carlos in the lobby of the justice center. He had just raided the vending machine of newly stocked Snickers bars and was heading back to his workstation. I called to him to wait up, which he did, but only after stashing his booty of confection in his pockets. We filtered through security and assembled upstairs around his desk.

  “So where did you go?” he asked, directing the question to Spinelli, probably assuming the field trip left him with goose bumps all over.

  “To Lilith’s,” I said, after realizing the cat had Spinelli’s tongue. “Carlos, did you know that Karen Webber once attended Doctor Lowell’s workshops?”

  “Karen? Yeah, I knew that.” He stuck his hands in his pockets to avoid fidgeting. He does that when he gets nervous. The fidgeting used to give it away. He still hasn’t figured out that putting his hands in his pockets does the same thing.

  “You knew that?” I said, “and what, you didn’t think it was pertinent?”

  “Pertinent?” He gathered his brows tightly. “To what?”

  “The case, Carlos! What the hell. After what we went through last year, somebody from one of the workshops dies suspiciously, and you don’t think that’s pertinent to the case?”

  “Well, sure, now that you say it like that.”

  I shook my head and uttered something completely unprofessional under my breath. I don’t think they heard it, but both knew better than to ask me to repeat it.

  “Tony,” said Carlos. “Karen Webber hadn’t gone to one of those workshops since before Doctor Lieberman took over, years before the Surgeon Stalker. I’m sorry, but I didn’t see the big deal.” He pulled his hands from his pockets as he spoke, and three Snickers bars jumped out. He gathered them off the floor and held two of them out for Spinelli and me. We each took one, much to his disappointment.

  I said to him, “Under ordinary circumstances, I don’t suppose it would have been a big deal. But after the shit we dealt with last year, and seeing that Karen’s brother was one of the Stalker’s victims, you should have said something.”

  “Sorry.” He peeled the wrapper off the candy bar and took a bite. “So, is that why you guys went to Lilith’s, to ask her about Karen?”

  “No, we went there to check out a hunch I had about Benjamin Rivera.”

  “Benny? What, you thought he was faking his retardation.”

  “Carlos, he’s not retarded. He’s autistic.”

  “Same thing.”

  “No it isn’t.”

  “Eh, whatever.” He brushed a small piece of nougat off his bottom lip. “So, what was your hunch?”

  “Well,” I said, “you remember how he told us that he was like Leona.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I suspected that meant he had some extrasensory abilities, like ESP or something. Apparently someone else thought so, too, and enrolled him in one of Doctor Lowell’s early workshops.”

  Carlos popped the last of his candy bar into his mouth, stuffing his cheeks like a hamster. “Interesting,” he said, only it came out sounding more like, “Inawusdin.”

  “Yeah, but that’s not all. Benjamin’s comment got me thinking, and I remembered something Spinelli said about Anna Davalos and Bridget Dean.”

  “Me?” said Spinelli, pointed to himself. “What did I tell you?”

  “Plenty. About Bridget Dean, you said her boss felt she had a sort of ‘sixth sense’ that won her cases in court. And you said of Anna Davalos that she had a knack for anticipating her customer’s needs, and that her coworkers thought it seemed uncanny how she could read them so well.”

 
; “Right, I did.”

  “So, I went to ask Lilith, and she confirmed my suspicions that, indeed, Anna Davalos, Bridget Dean and Benjamin Rivera were all members of Doctor Lowell’s early workshops.”

  Carlos nearly choked upon hearing that. He ramped up his chewing and swallowed hard, raking his tongue across his teeth behind closed mouth before swallowing again and saying, “Anna, Bridget and Benny?”

  “That’s right.”

  “All physic?”

  “I don’t know about physic,” I said, “but now you know why it upset me that you didn’t mention Karen Webber’s involvement in Doctor Lowell’s studies. We have a pattern here. Karen Webber, Bridget Dean and Anna Davalos were all members of the workshop, and now they’re all dead.”

  “May be just a coincidence,” said Spinelli.

  “Coincidence? What about Carol Kessler, the fifth Beatle? Is it a coincidence that she also attended Doctor Lowell’s workshop with Karen, Bridget, Anna and Benjamin, and now her name shows up in this little magical mystery tour of ours?”

  Spinelli shook his head. “Come again?”

  Carlos said, “It’s a 60’s reference. He does that. You’ll get used to it.”

  I said to Spinelli, “You think it’s also a coincidence that Karen died the day that she and Kessler had an appointment to meet.”

  He raised his shoulders and dropped them without debate. I just kept rolling over him. “Well, it wasn’t. You can bet on it. I think Karen believed Kessler was in immediate danger and wanted to get her out of town.”

  Carlos pointed to me. “You might have something there, Tony. While you were gone, I followed up on Kessler. I don’t know where she is now, but I know she left her house in a hurry. Neighbors say they saw her hopping into a taxi with an overnight bag. One said he thought she was running late for a flight. She didn’t even shut her front door.”

  “Do you know what day that was?”

  “Not sure, but I think Saturday morning.”

  “Hmm…the morning after Karen’s death. Spinelli, why don’t you––”

  “I’ll check flight logs,” he said, anticipating my thoughts.

  I nodded, impressed. “Thanks.”

  “Don’t mention it.”

  “Oh, speaking of mentioning something, have I mentioned Stinky Pete, Lucky Lenny or Crazy Eddy yet?”

  Carlos said, “No. Who are they?”

  “Names Lilith gave me. All former members of Lowell’s first workshop. It’s possible these guys may be tied up in this somehow. If that’s so, then boy, have we got our hands full.”

  “Tied up in what way, suspects or victim?”

  “Don’t know?”

  “You think we have another serial killer targeting former workshop members?”

  “We certainly can’t rule it out.”

  Spinelli said, “It’s also possible we’re making more of it then we need to. This could be a simple case of Rivera killing three people, not knowing about the connection they had to one another.”

  “No,” I said, “he would know about the connection, thanks to Benny’s involvement in the workshop.”

  “Still, shouldn’t we at least haul him in for formal questioning?”

  I shook my head. “Not without cause. Remember, he’s a defense attorney, and a damn good one. We’d have an easier time cuffing smoke to a screen door.”

  Spinelli’s expression softened, but his resolve did not. He perked up again once the idea hit him that we should find the three guys Lilith mentioned and bring them in for questioning. I have to say, I admired his tenacity. “I’d like to do that,” I said hesitantly, “but where would we look? I doubt if the names Stinky Pete, Lucky Lenny or Crazy Eddy would show up in a data search anywhere, except maybe at New Castle Downs.”

  Carlos said, “That’s a race track.”

  “Yes, Carlos, I know that.”

  “Why would we look for them there?”

  “We wouldn’t.”

  “But you said––”

  “He was joking,” said Spinelli, sounding impatient.

  “Joking?”

  “Yeah, because they sound like names you’d give to race horses.”

  “Oh.”

  I said, “What about Piakowski?”

  Carlos shook his head, “That’s a terrible name for a race horse.”

  I ignored him, hoping like hell he was just kidding. Spinelli chuckled under his breath, but returned an answer quickly enough to cover for it. “No good,” he said. “I already tried locating him. His last known address turned out to be a strip joint down on South Jefferson.”

  “So, nobody has a bead on him?”

  “Uh-uh. The guy’s a chameleon.

  “Great, and where does one look for a chameleon?”

  “Usually right under one’s nose,” Spinelli joked.

  Carlos said, “Hey, maybe we already have him down in holding.”

  I laughed at that, knowing it could never be so easy. “No, you can probably bury that idea. I’m guessing that Piakowski is the kind of guy you don’t find if he doesn’t want you to.”

  “My, God!” cried Carlos. Spinelli and I both turned on our heels expecting to see Piakowski standing right behind us. He wasn’t, of course.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “You said, bury.”

  “Yes?”

  “Karen’s funeral is this morning.” He looked at his watch. “If we leave now we can just make it.”

  Spinelli and I checked the clock on the wall, though I don’t know why. We could have bet on Carlos’ punctuality. There are just two things in life he never misses: meals and funerals. We grabbed our jackets and scuttled for the door.

  Just outside the city is a small cemetery, founded back in the days of the American Revolution. New Castle was barely a township when they laid the first soul to rest there: a Mister J. Quincy Stone, of Boston proper. It’s a nice place where the hills roll gently from a high point overlooking the Church and down to the creek behind the old textile mill. The trees there are mostly deciduous: maple, elm, ash and hickory; a lot of them planted by mourners as everlasting tributes to their dearly departed.

  There is also a stone wall around two-thirds of the cemetery, knee-high and loosely stacked. The remaining third came down in the 20’s to allow expansion for growing demand. Carlos likes to point out how the cemetery is so popular that people are just dying to get in. I ask him not to tell that old joke at funerals, but inevitably, he does.

  It’s in that expanded part of the cemetery where we found the Webber party. Is that what you call it? The word party seems too celebratory if you ask me, although I don’t suppose the Donnor party had much to celebrate either. God, I hate funerals.

  When she buried Travis nearly a year ago, Karen reserved a plot right next to him for her own eventual interment. I’m sure she never expected to join him so soon. Had she known, she might have told them just to dig one large hole and wait for her before filling it in. I know that sounds callous, but trust me. I wasn’t the only one there thinking that. Cops can get cynical sometimes, especially at funerals, and there were many of us at Karen’s.

  Carlos, Spinelli and I stood back a ways, under a large elm for shade, the same tree Carlos and I stood beneath to get out of the rain last year. Back then, we kept our distance because the attendees were mostly Travis’ relatives and other participants in the many workshops held at the institute. This time we held back to let the men and women of the First Precinct have front row to honor their own. It’s not that Karen wasn’t one of us, or we one of them. But cops are like family, and as with all families, you have your pecking order.

  The service was just winding down, the American flag already folded and presented to Karen’s kin, when Spinelli tapped me on the shoulder.

  “What is it?” I asked. His face looked pale white.

  “Over there.” He pointed.

  I looked out at a sea of blue uniforms with black suits and black dresses peppered within. “Where?”
>
  “There!” he pointed again, straighter, as though he might reach all the way to his target. The guy wearing dark sunglasses.”

  “Everybody’s wearing dark sunglasses,” I said.

  “Yeah, but I’m talking about the guy with the sleeveless vest and prison tats. Isn’t that Piakowski?”

  “It is!” I said. I grabbed Carlos by the arm to tell him, but he had already heard us and picked Piakowski out from the crowd. “Let’s go have a chat with him, shall we?” I motioned in two semi-circles. “Carlos, you go around the left. Spinelli, go right. I’ll go up the middle.”

  We headed out, just as the crowd began to break up. I spotted Carlos moving fast along the left flank, but lost Spinelli among the taller heads filtering to the right. I felt confident Piakowski had not realized we were on to him, but in his haste to make tracks, he was moving pretty good.

  Beyond the break in the stone wall where it led into the older section of the cemetery, I spotted Spinelli. He dashed out ahead of Piakowski and was coming back at him head on. I quickened my pace. Carlos began to slide in from the side. We were putting the squeeze on Piakowski and he never saw it coming.

  When I got close enough, I called out to him. “Greg! Gregory Piakowski! You got a minute?”

  He turned and looked back over his shoulder. I waved and smiled as if we were old friends. “Greg! It’s me. Wait up!”

  He hesitated, thought twice about it, and then started away in a trot. This time I called for him to stop. Half a dozen police officers heard the command and drew their weapons. Spinelli charged him head-on, crisscrossing his arms at his chest like a battering ram. The two collided just as Carlos drilled in from the side, knocking both to the ground. By the time I reached them, Piakowski already had five Glock 9’s pointing at his head.

  “All right, thank you, guys. Thank you,” I said, flashing my old shield. Carlos and Spinelli were already wearing theirs clipped to their belts. “I think we can take it from here. Thanks again.”

  The swarm of blue hornets dispersed as quickly as they descended. We pulled Piakowski to his feet, where I immediately grabbed him by the wrist and twisted his hand behind his back. “You going to give us any trouble?” I asked him.

  He shook his head. “No trouble. I’m not gonna run.”

  “You ran once already.”

  “I didn’t know who you were.”

  “Who did you think we were? You’re at a cop’s funeral.”

  “I dun`no. Reporters maybe.”

  “Reporters?”

  “Ah-huh.”

  “Why would you run from a reporter?”

  “Don’t know. Thought maybe you found out.”

  “Found out what?” said Carlos. He grabbed Piakowski’s other wrist.

  “Nothin`. I dun`no nuthin`.”

  “Why did you come here?”

  “To say goodbye.”

  Carlos jerked his wrist and gave it an unnatural twist. “Didn’t you say goodbye to her when you killed her?”

  “Ouuugh! Stop! That hurts!”

  I signaled for Carlos to ease up some. “So what, it hurts? You don’t think Karen Webber hurt when you threw her off that balcony?”

  “I didn’t throw nobody off no balcony. I swear. I came here to say goodbye. That’s all.”

  “What do you know about the deaths of Anna Davalos and Bridget Dean?”

  “Nothin`! I swear!”

  “What about Ricardo Rivera? Why were you and he together recently at an outdoor café? Were you planning their murders?”

  “We wasn’t planning` nothin`.” I motioned for Carlos to turn up the heat again. “Ouuugh! Please, I swear. We was just havin` coffee. Just coffee. Ya gotta believe me!”

  “Tell me what you don’t want the reporters to know.”

  “I can’t! I promised!”

  “Carlos?”

  “No wait, I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you. Just please stop! He’s gonna break my wrist.”

  I signaled for Carlos to stop, and both he and I released our hold on Piakowski. He grabbed his wrist and tucked it to his gut. “It’s Karen,” he said. “We had plans Friday night, a date, but she didn’t want anyone to know about us.”

  “That’s a lie.”

  “No, it’s the truth. We were going to get together for dinner at her apartment.” He reached for the inside pocket of his vest. Spinelli instinctively drew his weapon, fell into a shooter’s stance and leveled it at Piakowski’s chest. Carlos and I barely flinched. As rookies, instincts might have had us to do the same thing, but experience told us not to. I waved my hand over Spinelli’s Glock. He looked at me and then at Carlos. I could almost see the disappointment on his face. Piakowski removed his hand slowly as Spinelli holstered his weapon.

  “It’s just a Marlboro,” said Piakowski. I nodded okay and he finished slipping the pack from his vest. His hands were shaking as he lit the cigarette, but his first two drags seemed to calm his nerves considerably. I waited until he went for his third before stopping his hand halfway to his lips.

  “Wait. Tell us more.”

  He let his hand come down. “It’s like I said, we started seeing each other a few weeks ago. We kept it under wraps on accoun`a my…what she called, past indiscretions. She didn’t think it would be a good idea if her coworkers found out about us. She made me promise.”

  Carlos said, “I don’t believe it.”

  Piakowski laughed nervously. “Hell, I almost didn’t believe it neither, but it’s true. I met her downtown where Ricardo works. Karen came there a lot to see Bridget Dean. The two went to lunch together all the time. One day I asked Ricardo to introduce us.”

  Carlos crowded Piakowski and nudged him back a step. “That’s a lie! Karen would never date a thug like you. We’ve seen your record.”

  He stiffened his back and shoulders. “I know. That’s what Ricardo said. He told me she was a cop, but I didn’t care. I wanted to meet her.” He looked at me, and then at his cigarette. I gave him a nod and watched him suck the life out of it. He snuffed the butt out under his heel and continued. “Listen, guys, you gotta believe me. I did my time. I’ve gone straight. I told Karen that. She believed me. She believed in me. She gave me a chance.”

  Spinelli stepped in. “She would never go out with a murderer. And you’ve been convicted of murder-one.”

  “That wasn’t murder. That was involuntary manslaughter. I got the murder-one overturned. If you reviewed my file, you would know that.”

  “Yeah, we know that. We also know how your hot-shot, fast-talking lawyer friend got that conviction overturned on a mere technicality.”

  “Don’t matter none. I made parole fair-and-square now.”

  “Forget that,” I said. “What happened the night you were supposed to meet Karen for dinner?”

  He looked off into the distance, as if the answer might play out for him somewhere in the trees. “She wanted me over around five,” he said. “I was only runnin` a couple`a minutes late, so I didn’t bother to call.”

  I looked at Carlos, remembering that I asked him to check Karen’s phone records for about that time. He gave me a subtle nod. Piakowski continued.

  “I was walkin` like I always do, seeing as I got no driver’s license. From a few blocks away, I hear all these sirens. I think, boy, that’s some fire. Then I turn the corner by her apartment and I see all them fire and policemen and whatnot. So I hold up a minute, I mean, cops make me jumpy, you know.

  “But then I look down on the sidewalk, and I can’t believe my eyes. They’s throwin` a sheet over Karen. I started to shake all over. They’s gonna think I done this, I says to myself. Who’s gonna believe I didn’t? So I turned and ran. I already knew about Bridget and that girl from the coffee shop. I told Ricardo I was scared, and he hid me in his guesthouse. I wouldn’t have ever come out, but for Karen’s funeral. I hadda see her and say goodbye. I just hadda. You gotta believe me. That’s the gawd’s honest truth.”

  I put my hand out to shake Piakowski’s. He took it re
luctantly and we shook. He probably expected me to slap the cuffs on him and throw him in jail. I saw in Spinelli’s eyes that he wanted me to do it. With Carlos, I wasn’t so sure. The old Cuban’s getting harder to read these days. Of course, none of what he, Spinelli or I thought mattered. Guilty or not, we hadn’t a shred of evidence to haul Piakowski downtown. But he didn’t need to know that. I still had his hand in mine. I pulled him in close so that he could not mix my words.

  “Listen, Gregory, the department will have you under constant surveillance from now on, and if Rivera tries to help you leave town in violation of your parole, we’ll have the bar pull his license for aiding and abetting a felon. You got it?”

  “Got it, I got it. Thank you so much. You won’t be sorry, none-a-yiz. Thank you.” He turned to Carlos and Spinelli. “Thank you, gentlemen. Thank you.”

  He shook hands with Carlos, but Spinelli would have none of it. The three of us watched as Piakowski hurried off through the cemetery, zigzagging around headstones like a wayward bumblebee.

  Carlos turned to me and smiled. I knew that look, spontaneous though it was. Spinelli had not yet learned to read all the subtleties and nuances that came with it, though those mostly only hinted at the depth of his impulses. I pulled my wallet from my back pocket and opened the fold.

  “Is it my turn?” His smile broadened by degrees. “Okay, where is it this time?”

  “Where else?” he answered, his hands splayed with palms up.

  I took a guess. “The Perk?”

  “Turkey Tuesday. You gotta love it.”

  Great, I thought, and felt that queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach returning. Turkey Tuesday at the Perk is everything Meatball Monday is and more. They have a plate on the menu there they call Super Turkey Sampler. Who knew that a turkey could be baked, broiled, braised, barbecued, poached, seared, stewed, steamed, sautéed, roasted, grilled, deep-fried and fricasseed? It’s crazy. To date, only Carlos has ever been able to finish it, lock, stock and barrel. He told me this on the way to The Percolator. I thanked him for that information, and seeing that I was paying, made him promise he wouldn’t order one.

  “Fine,” he said. “I’ll have more room for dessert.” Like that might sway me.

  We got to the Perk and placed our orders with Natalie, who had graduated from lunch counter to tables and booths for the afternoon. Then, after waiting for Carlos to return from the restroom, we settled in for a round of brainstorming over the case and the latest developments concerning Gregory Piakowski.

  Carlos was of the opinion that Piakowski lied about everything: dating Karen Webber, coming up on the calamity at her apartment after her fall, and especially about going straight. He reasoned that an innocent man wouldn’t run, and reiterated his belief that Karen would never date a convicted felon. I pointed out how Piakowski did know about Karen’s dinner plans, a detail never released to the public.

  “It took place at dinner time,” he argued. “He didn’t have to know about her plans to guess she eats dinner around then.”

  “So why did he throw Rivera under the bus? Piakowski didn’t have to volunteer where he’s been hiding out. He could have said he’s been laying low under a bridge somewhere.”

  “He’s a thug, Tony. You put the squeeze on a thug and he’ll squeal like a pig. You know that. Why are you sticking up for the guy?”

  Natalie showed up. I sat back as she distributed a round of iced teas to the table. She served Spinelli first and then me. When she set Carlos’ tea down, I saw them exchange glances and a wink. As soon as she walked away, I hit Carlos on the forearm.

  “What was that?”

  He gave me that guilty, eye-blinking routine that’s supposed to look like wounded pride. “What was what?”

  “That wink. Don’t think we didn’t see it. You saw it, Spinelli, didn’t you?”

  He shrugged non-committal like. “I don’t know. It might have been something in his eye.”

  “It was,” said Carlos. “I had something in my eye.”

  “Yeah, and so did Natalie, right?”

  “Sure, probably a lash.”

  I looked to Spinelli and waved a stern finger at him. “He’s corrupting you. You know that, don’t you?”

  “You didn’t answer me,” said Carlos, his subtle way of changing the subject.

  “What?”

  “I asked why you were sticking up for Piakowski.”

  “I’m not sticking up for him. I’m only trying to get you to look at all sides of the puzzle.”

  “I’m looking at all sides.” He took a sip of tea, emptied six packets of sugar into his glass, gave it a stir, and sipped again. “But no matter how I turn it, I still see Piakowski as a liar, a thug and a killer.”

  “And that’s okay if that’s how you see it, just so long as you’re looking at it through a prism and not a straw.” I said to Spinelli. “How `bout you, son? What’s your gut telling you?”

  He rocked his head to one side. “I don’t know. After the show Piakowski put on for us at the cemetery, I’m less sure now. I think if Rivera were going to help Piakowski after murdering someone, then instead of hiding him in his guesthouse he would have helped him get out of town altogether.”

  “Not if they weren’t done knocking off people from their hit list,” Carlos offered.

  “A reasonable assumption,” I said, “but to assume that, is to suggest that the link the victims share with the workshops conceals another motive, and if so, then someone else from the workshops will die next.”

  “That still doesn’t explain why Piakowski came to Karen’s funeral,” Spinelli remarked. “If he had a hand in her death, that’s the last place I would expect to see him.”

  “Exactly!” said Carlos, snapping his fingers to emphasize his point. “Piakowski felt comfortable enough to go to the funeral and scope out his next victim because he knew no one would look for him there.”

  “So then, if he were to kill someone else, who would it be?”

  “Who from the old workshop is left?”

  “Lilith,” I said, “and of course, Benjamin Rivera and Carol Kessler. And we don’t know for sure, but we can’t forget the early workshop dropouts, Stinky, Lucky and Crazy.”

  Carlos laughed at that. “Sounds like a nightclub act. Maybe they should go on the road.”

  “Maybe they already have,” said Spinelli. “I mean if not potential victims, any one or all of them could be a killer. We can’t rule that out.”

  “Yes, well don’t forget,” I said, “we also can’t rule out suicide in these cases either. There’s still not a shred of evidence pointing to the contrary.”

  “What about the mysterious figure on the glass in the Dean video?”

  “That’s not evidence. Hell, even Dean wasn’t in the frame. No, I’m sorry, but if Piakowski, Rivera or even the three amigos were culpable in the deaths of those women, then we need to find out how they did it.”

  That silenced the table. The answer seemed as far away as the moon. I considered that Rivera might have manipulated the security video to wash out visual records of him shooting Bridget Dean and planting a gun in her hand. I also accepted the possibility that he or Piakowski could have forced entry into Anna Davalos’ apartment and slashed her wrists while holding her down in the bathtub. Yet, in my wildest dreams, I could not wrap my mind around the idea that one or both somehow broke into Karen Webber’s apartment, forced her to jump to her death, and then escaped the apartment undetected. I entertained, but then quickly dismissed, the possibility that the dark force of magic might have somehow played a hand in this evil affair when….

  “Mind control!” Spinelli shouted.

  Carlos and I jumped so high we nearly fell out of our seats.

  “What?”

  Spinelli lowered his voice. Still, his excitement had the veins on the side of his neck bulging. “What if someone got to those women, I mean, got into their heads and made them commit suicide? That would explain how the murders could occur while the wome
n were alone and behind locked doors.”

  “Could that happen?” I asked.

  “Why not? You’ve seen stranger things. Carlos told me all about the weird paranormal stuff you and he witnessed last year.”

  “Yes, but we never witnessed total mind control.”

  “Yet, you believe it’s possible.”

  “I guess, but…. Carlos, what do you think?”

  He shrugged lightly. “I’ve seen stranger things, Tony. And you told me about that thought form thing that played out on the window. That was strange.”

  “It was, I’ll admit, but that was a manifestation of energy harnessed by collective thought. It never got into anyone’s head.”

  “What if it wasn’t just energy, but a someone?” Spinelli countered.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m talking about co-possession. I read about it in my studies of the occult.”

  “I don’t know what that is.”

  “It’s a leap of paraphysical transmigration.”

  “I still don’t follow.”

  “Consider people that can facilitate OBE at will.”

  “You mean, out-of-body experiences,” I said. “Like bilocation.”

  “Exactly, but now take that one step further. What if the person bilocating could enter another person’s body and co-exist there, or co-possess that body? They might, if only briefly, overpower the body and make it do something it wouldn’t otherwise do, like kill its host. Then the energy of the OBE individual could return to his own body.”

  “That could explain the fuzzy image we saw in the reflection on the video,” I said. “If someone were to simply materialized as an apparition, then none of the other cameras in the building would have seen anything.”

  Carlos said, “But who can do that?”

  I looked at him and scowled. “Only one person I know bilocates, and that’s “Leona Diaz.”

  “Impossible,” he said. “Leona wouldn’t hurt a fly. She’s incapable of it.”

  “You’re probably right, but we still need to make sure. I’m going to go and see her right after lunch. In the meantime, I want you to check out Piakowski’s story about where he’s been staying. Interview Rivera. See if their stories jive.”

  “Gottcha.”

  “Spinelli, do what you need to do to track down Carol Kessler. We need to talk to her, as well. If she didn’t board a plane or a train, then she may still be in town somewhere.”

  “I’ll get right on it.”

  “Good.”

  Natalie showed up moments later with our orders. Spinelli got the turkey burger with chips and a pickle. I got the turkey club and a side of potato salad. Carlos, it turned out, apparently didn’t use the restroom as we had assumed earlier. Instead, he had pulled Natalie aside and told her to switch whatever he might order to that damn Super Turkey Sampler.

  I pointed at his plate. “Guess that explains the wink you two shared earlier.”

  He looked at me with all the innocence of a baby. “What wink?”

  I rolled my eyes and gave it up. He was still going at it when I left him and Spinelli to go see Leona Diaz.

  Eight

  Leona Diaz lived in a tiny efficiency on the other side of town. I had visited her there only once since her release from the hospital the day after her rescue.

  I believed she came through her ordeal remarkably well, considering the horrors surrounding those circumstances. Through bilocation, she had witnessed crimes of unspeakable savagery. I never pressed her hard for details, though. The paranormal nature in which she witnessed those crimes would have rendered her testimony inadmissible in a court of law, anyway. My primary concern was then, and remains, her mental and physical well-being.

  I walked up to Leona’s apartment and rang the bell. She seemed confused the first few moments after answering the door, but as soon as she recognized me, she threw her arms around my neck and damn near squeezed the life right out of me.

  “Detective Marcella! Dios mio! I do not believe it! Please….” She pulled me in by the hand. “Come in. You must not stand out in the cold.”

  “It’s not cold,” I started to say, but by then she had hauled me into her apartment and sat me down on an overstuffed armchair. She pulled a chair up across from me and sat so close that our knees almost met.

  “It is so good to see you again, Detective. I am in static!”

  I laughed a little. “Leona, you’re English is getting better, but I think you mean, ecstatic.”

  She cupped her hands to her mouth and giggled. “Did I say something much silly?”

  I shook my head and dismissed it with a wave. “No, sólo un poquito. Está bién.”

  “Gracias, Detective. You are too kind.”

  We smiled at each other, she like a child, excited, her feet tapping the floor wildly, and me like a proud father, disbelieving that this young flower had grown more beautiful than ever. Nineteen-years-old and she maintained such remarkably delicate features; baby smooth skin like caramel mocha, a smile so bright and innocent. Her long, flowing hair was dark and fine and her eyes like big brown moons.

  “You look well,” I told her. “Are you doing okay? You working?”

  “Sí. I am the optometrist’s assistant at Optic-wise Visions Center.”

  “Are you? How good for you. And you’ve learned to pronounce optometrist so well.”

  She drew her hands to her mouth and giggled again. I watched her eyes peek through tiny slits, but never lose their twinkle. “I know, thank you,” she said. “I have practiced so hard.” She straightened her face and dissolved her smile. “The op·tom·e·trist will see you now, Detective Marcella. Do you like for the op·tom·e·trist to call you tomorrow? The op·tom·e·trist will return in one hour—”

  I laughed, which broke her up. Then we both laughed until our cheeks turned red and sore. I would rather have gotten up and left then, remembering Leona that way forever. But the child’s eyes had seen adult atrocities before, and if ever I were to break open this case, I had to know if she had seen them yet again. I scooted forward in my chair slightly until our knees touched. I felt the tremble in her legs subside. She folded her hands and placed them neatly on her lap. Her eyes grew wide and round. I watched her take a deep breath, and before letting it out, she stiffened her back and broadened her shoulders. It pained me to start, but I had no choice.

  “Leona, do you….” My voice cracked. I cleared my throat, swallowed and then tried again. “Do you know why I’m here?”

  “I think so.” She said, and nodded faintly. As she said this, a thin strand of bangs fell over her eyes. I reached up and gently brushed it aside.

  “Last year you experienced several episodes of bilocation,” I said softly. “Do you remember how we talked about that?”

  “Sí, I remember. I try to forget, but the curse of bilocation is strong.”

  “I know. I’m sorry about that. I wish we all could forget those terrible times. But you see, that’s sort of why I’m here. It pains me to dredge all that up again, but I have to ask you this. Recently, within the last several weeks that is, we’ve had three people commit––”

  “I know,” she said, stopping me cold. She placed her hand on my knee and settled her gaze upon it. “I saw Bridget and Karen.”

  “You saw what they did, you mean.”

  “Sí.”

  “Did you see Anna Davalos, too?”

  She nodded, and again her bangs spilled over her eyes. This time I let it go.

  “Leona?” I placed my hand atop hers. “Were those women murdered?”

  She gave pause, as if unsure about what she thought she had seen. Though bilocation had always afforded her vivid details of her experiences, something about these episodes must have held obvious contradictions. I watched as she steadied her breath, abandoning her downward gaze and allowing her eyes find refuge in mine.

  “Detective….” Her brows furrowed in apparent confusion. “I am afraid I cannot tell you. Though I feel som
eone may have influenced their actions, I know that mortal contact by another did not occur.”

  “That’s okay,” I said. I reached for her other hand, gathered the two and cupped them gently. Already, I could feel her trembling subsiding. “Now, Leona,” I squeezed her hands a little harder. “This next question is very difficult for me, but again, I have to ask. When someone has one of these out-of-body experiences, is it ever possible for he or she to enter a consistence with another and coexist with it?”

  She hesitated slightly. “Sí, I believe that is possible.”

  “Have you ever entered a consistence with anyone during OBE?”

  Her answer confounded me. “I do not know. Sometimes my experience is a reflection of another’s. I see what they see, but from another dimension.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Like looking into a mirror,” she said, peering into my eyes as though the mirror were before her now. “All that goes on, appears to happen in a world I can see, but not touch. I do not believe I have influence there, yet by observing, I have influenced it.”

  “When you saw Karen, Bridget and Anna commit suicide, were you coexisting with them?”

  “I…do not think so.”

  “At any time did you possess and control their minds or bodies?”

  “Possess?” Her brows gathered tightly again, her eyes and mine severing connections.

  “Did you consciously or subconsciously cause or direct those women to commit suicide.”

  “I…no! I do not know!”

  She pulled her hands free from mine and buried her face in her palms. Slumping forward, she began to sob. I leaned in and cradled her head to my shoulder, stilling her tears and hushing her softly. “I’m sorry,” I said, rocking her slowly. “I had to…had to ask.”

  I never believed for a moment that Leona could purposely induce or inflict upon the will of those women the desire to commit suicide. Yet, neither could I rule out the possibility that she could have affected the results on a subconscious level.

  In past cases, I had seen latent anxieties caused by repressed emotions manifest into disorders not readily diagnosed. That the three victims were all former participants of Doctor Lowell’s initial studies indicated to me the obvious link to their killer.

  It seemed conceivable, therefore, that since Doctor Lowell had kidnapped and held Leona, that she might subconsciously wish to eliminate all vestiges of his legacy, no matter how relevant to her current predicament.

  If paranormal forces had previously beckoned her to witness the deaths of innocent people, then surely it seemed possible those same forces could have contributed to the perverse twisting of her subconscious, thus commanding her influence upon the will of those women.

  I waited for Leona to collect herself, and when I felt the time right, I asked her to come with me.

  “For a while,” I said. “I’ll have you back home in no time.”

  “Where shall we go?” she asked, dabbing her cheeks with the back of her hand.

  “I want to take you to see Lilith. If you’ve suppressed memories of co-possessing an individual during OBE, then perhaps her capacity as a sensitive can free those memories.”

  “But I have plans this evening. I have a dinner date in just a while.”

  “Where? Here?”

  “No. I am to meet him where he works, down at the Hartman, Pierce and Petruzelli building.”

  “The Hartman…. Leona, I suppose it’s none of my business, but is your date with Benjamin Rivera?”

  She smiled bashfully. “Sí.”

  I stood and held out my hand. “Fine, then. I’ll ask Lilith to meet us there. I’m sure she won’t mind. Will you come with me and help me iron all this out? I really want to set things right for Karen, Bridget and Anna.”

  She looked up at me, unsure, perhaps vulnerable and a little scared. I smiled and gave her a wink that told her everything would be all right. Her eyes thinned with her smile. She took my hand and said, “Lilith will go gentle with me?”

  “Of course,” I answered. “Didn’t I give you my word last year that I would never let anyone hurt you again?”

  “Sí, prometiste.”

  “That’s right. Now come, my dear. Your chariot awaits.”