“We need to see Otto Fischer again, too,” Litchfield said. “We need to ask him what he knows about Adam Matthews and if he hung a flyer on the corkboard next to the mailboxes five years ago.”
“He might have kept one,” Danski said. “First thing tomorrow we’ll go back over there and ask Otto what he knows about Matthews. While we’re there we can canvas the building and ask if any of the other tenants used Matthews’ services.”
“Good plan,” Litchfield said. “I’m sorry, I’ve gotta get back to the game. They just tied the score and the game went into overtime. We’ll talk in the morning, Steve. Go home and get some rest.”
“Yeah, I’m leaving now.”
Chapter Sixteen
Danski’s desk phone was ringing when he pushed the office door open the next morning. As he got closer, he noticed the yellow light was blinking. He glanced to the outer office and saw Shameka talking with another detective. Litchfield was busy on his computer and most of the other desks were empty.
“Danski,” he said when he lifted the phone.
“I need you and your partner in here right away,” Quinn said sternly. “Bring the Whitlock file with you.”
Danski chin-nodded to Quinn’s office when Litchfield looked up.
“Yes, Sir,” Danski answered without question before disconnecting.
Quinn was sitting at his desk with his arms folded when the detectives came in. He gestured to two less comfortable-looking chairs. “I’ve got a Comstat meeting in an hour and I know they’re gonna be all over me about the Whitlock case. So, tell me this. Are you getting anywhere?”
“It’s taking shape,” Danski answered.
“That doesn’t answer my question,” Quinn barked. “Are you getting anywhere on this case or not?”
“We’ve got more positives than negatives now,” Danski answered.
“That’s double-talk,” Quinn scowled. “Answer my question.”
“Initially the only thing that made sense was that Susan killed Jake, took him from the apartment and disposed of his body the week before she reported him missing,” Danski said.
“If that’s true, why would she come in here five years later and ask you to reopen the case?” Quinn asked shaking his head. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“Her conscience might have bothered her,” Litchfield suggested. “She might have felt compelled to talk about what she did, without saying too much.”
“Thank you, Doctor Litchfield,” Quinn smirked. “You said initially the only thing that made sense was that Susan killed Jake and disposed of his body the week before she reported him missing. I assume that means you have a new theory.”
“Susan hasn’t been much help,” Danski responded. “Until yesterday, everything that came out of her mouth was a lie. She told us she and Martin were a devoted and totally monogamous couple before he died in a hunting accident sixteen months before Jake was kidnapped. We learned, however, that neither of those statements was true. Martin is very much alive and well. He’s living on a large piece of property in the Catskill Mountains that he inherited from his parents.”
“Yes, I know you went up there to question him,” Quinn said. “What did you learn?”
“He told us that Susan’s description of an idyllic marriage was a joke, a farce. He said he became suspicious about Jake’s paternity and took him to a diagnostic center and had him tested. It turned out his suspicions were right on target. His DNA proved he’s not Jake’s biological father. He said he immediately left Susan and Jake, but he has continued to provide for them. He told us that for the past six and a half years he’s been sending her a very generous check every month that provides very handsomely for her and Jake. He claims it’s completely voluntarily and he continued sending the same amount even after Jake was reported missing.”
“In other words, he just wanted to be free of her and he is not a suspect.”
“Exactly,” Danski said.
“Go on.”
“Yesterday, we confronted Susan with this information and she admitted she was deceptive when she spoke with Latimer about Martin being Jake’s father. She lied by omission when she allowed Latimer to assume Martin was the father, and she outright lied to him when she claimed that Martin was dead. She admitted having two affairs. The first was with a man named Aaron Cooper who was the manager of a mini-market on Second Avenue; the second with Adam Matthews, a handyman who did work in her building at the time. When we pressed her on the paternity issue, she said Matthews is Jake’s father. No question in her mind.”
“What about the kidnap?” Quinn said impatiently.
“She told us that Matthews had a key to her apartment and when she asked for it back, he said he lost it.”
Quinn nodded. “A convenient answer.”
“Susan told us she ran into Matthews a short time before Jake was kidnapped. She said Jake was with her at the time and Matthews made a big fuss over him. Matthews told her he had a son that was born a month before Jake. As their conversation went on, he told her that his son was an insulin-dependent type-one diabetic which did not surprise Susan because she had noticed that Matthews wore a silver medical-bracelet. She couldn’t say positively, but it makes sense that the bracelet identified him as a diabetic.”
Quinn nodded and sat back. “So, you believe that Adam Matthews snatched Jake from his bed that night five years ago and is now caring for two diabetic sons.”
“Yes,” Danski said. “He had a key to the apartment.”
“If you’re right about Matthews being a diabetic himself, he more than likely would remain in his comfort zone and stay near his doctor and the pharmacy where he has his prescriptions filled.”
“Our thoughts exactly,” Danski responded.
“But you haven’t located him?”
Danski admitted they had no idea where Matthews was, but said they believe diabetes was the key to finding him. “I just got off the phone with a manager with a national diabetes research group. I told him we were looking for a father and two nine-year-old boys who are all type one diabetics. He agreed to do what he could to help.”
“On the other hand, Matthews might have taken the boys out of state,” Quinn said. “What do we know about his ties to other locales?”
“We really don’t know much about the man,” Danski admitted. “According to Susan, he’s a handyman who works on referrals. We’ll talk with other tenants in the building when we go back there this morning and see if we can find others he did work for. Maybe they know more about the man than Susan does.”
“I’m not so sure how credible this new information is,” Litchfield said. “I haven’t completely bought into the idea that Adam Matthews is Jake’s real father and that one night, out of the clear blue sky, he snuck into Susan’s apartment and kidnapped Jake.”
Quinn nodded. “You’re wondering why it took her five years to come up with this story and provide the name of a suspect with little prodding?”
“Exactly,” Litchfield said. “If everything she’s telling us now is true, why couldn’t she see the obvious? If she’s so sure that Matthews is Jake’s father and he had the key to her apartment, why didn’t she mention any of this to Latimer?”
“Maybe she was overwhelmed,” Quinn suggested. “Blinded by the enormity of the situation.”
Litchfield shook his head. “The whole story still sounds fishy to me. I think she had so many boyfriends and so many one-night-stands that she really doesn’t know who Jake’s father is. I think she invented this Adam Matthews character to save face. He’s someone we won’t be able to find because he doesn’t exist.”
Litchfield once again brought up his guilty conscience theory, that Jake was getting in the way of Susan’s career and she either killed him and disposed of his body a week before she reported him missing, or she sold him in some illicit black-market arrangement.”
“So you think she came up with this Matthews guy and the whole diabetes angle when she felt you suspected her of being invo
lved in Jake’s disappearance?” Quinn said.
“Yes,” Litchfield said. “Just like Casey Anthony created all those people and theories when the detectives in Orlando questioned her - the babysitter Zenaida Fernandez-Gonzalez, her job at Disney and a hundred other things.”
“I tend to believe that Susan is telling us the truth now and Jake was taken by his biological father and he’s living with him right now,” Danski said.
“If Matthews has the boy, he might have taken him out of state,” Quinn said.
Litchfield shook his head. “I still think Adam Matthews is a name Susan made up when we began to zero in on her and ask some tough questions.”
“Well, someone is Jake’s father,” Quinn said. “Unless Susan was artificially inseminated.”
“I’ll admit we caught her in many lies” Danski said,” but I think she’s now telling the truth about Matthews. It would mean the man has two sons who more than likely bear a resemblance to one another. If that’s the case, he’d be able to pass them off as twins – paternal twins, anyway.”
“The boys would have to go to school wherever they are,” Quinn said.
“They could be home-schooled,” Danski suggested.
“Good point,” Quinn said. “But even if they were home-schooled, they would have to be registered in the school system and at some point, Matthews would need to show their birth certificates.”
“We all know a birth certificate’s not hard to come up with these days, especially in this town. Matthews could pick one up for fifty bucks on Forty-Second Street or make a copy on his own. All he’d need is his son Jason’s birth certificate, a bottle of White-Out and a manual typewriter.”
Quinn smirked. “Try to find a manual typewriter these days. Tell me more about that diabetic association you mentioned. You thought Matthews, Jason and Jake might all be listed on some registry.”
“I don’t think there’s a master-list of people with diabetes out there,” Litchfield said. “Not even Penelope Garcia from ‘Criminal Minds’ has a computer app that can provide that kind of information.”
“Correct,” Danski said. “The man I spoke with said he can’t come up with the names, but he’d be able to do an electronic search of pharmacy records that can provide demographic information.”
Quinn groaned. “Demographics?”
“Yes, he said he can separate the diabetic population into different age groups and provide us with the raw information to work with.”
Quinn glanced at his watch and then stood. “Keep at it, gentlemen. I’ve got to head downtown. My meeting’s at ten. If Adam Matthews is a real person and not some imaginary friend that Susan came up with, I want you to get out there and find him.”
Chapter Seventeen
When they got to the cruiser Litchfield apologized for being so negative when they discussed the case with Quinn. “I just find it difficult to believe that all of a sudden, Susan decided to tell us the truth,” he said as he buckled up and Danski put the car in gear. “She had all the answers she should have had five years ago.”
“I’m glad you brought up those points,” Danski said. “If you have doubts you need to express them. I just hope you’ll be able to remain objective and keep that thought in the back of your head while the investigation goes on.”
“I can do that,” Litchfield said as he pulled his phone from his pocket and glanced over his phone messages. “It looks like I missed a call from Sandra while we were in there updating the boss in on the case.” He shoved the phone into his pocket again. “Whatever it was can’t be too important; I just saw her an hour ago.”
“You’d better call her to be sure,” Danski said. “By the way, how did last night’s game turn out?”
“Excellent,” Litchfield answered. “We won in double-overtime. It was their best game all year. One of our forwards fouled out in the fourth quarter so Gavin got a lot of court-time and he made the most of it. He scored in double figures, eleven points.”
Litchfield hit the recall button and waited. “Yeah, Baby; what’s up? he asked when Sandra answered and then sat up quickly. “Are you serious? Why didn’t you tell me this before I left this morning?” He smiled as he listened. “Get some rest,” he told her before snapping his phone shut.
“’Sup?” Danski asked when Litchfield disconnected and shoved the phone in his pocket. “It sounds like you got some good news.”
“The best news I could hope for,” Litchfield answered. “Sandra took one of those home-pregnancy-tests after I left the house this morning.”
“And,” Danski said.
“She’s pregnant all right. She already called her doctor and made an appointment.” Litchfield’s smile grew wider as he let his head fall back against the headrest. “We’ve been trying to have another child.”
“Congratulations,” Danski said.
Litchfield quickly got back to the business at hand. He opened his phone again and found Otto Fischer’s name on his list of contacts. Fischer answered as Danski merged with the morning traffic and then made a right-hand turn at the corner and then worked his way East.
“We’re on our way over to see Susan,” Litchfield told Fischer. “I’ve got those release forms for the tenants to sign off on, giving us permission to open the barrels in the basement.”
He clicked off when Fischer said he would meet him in the lobby.
“Aaron Cooper is a loose end,” Danski said minutes later when they pulled up in front of Susan’s building. “While you meet with Fischer I’ll go to Oscar’s Mini-market and see if the new owner can tell me where we can find Cooper.”
***
The detectives met again in the building’s lobby an hour later. “I struck out at the mini-market,” Danski admitted. “The new owner didn’t have an address for Cooper. He said he hasn’t seen the man since their grand opening five years ago. He didn’t have anything good to say about the man, either. How’d you do with the barrels?”
“We opened all thirty barrels. Some of them contained a few interesting things, but nothing that related to Jake’s disappearance in any way,” Litchfield said and then grinned. “If the barrels cost forty-five bucks apiece like Fischer said, I think they’re were worth more than anything any of the tenants had inside them.”
“We really weren’t expecting to find anything in the drums, were we?”
“No,” Litchfield answered. “But they still had to be checked out like everything else we come across.”
“Did you get much of an audience?”
Litchfield shook his head. “Three tenants joined us. I guess they had nothing else to do.”
Litchfield reached across Danski and pressed the elevator call-button. “Maybe Susan will have something worthwhile to tell us. She seems to remember a little something each time we talk with her.”
Danski nodded. “We’ll see.”
“This is an extremely quiet building,” Litchfield commented when the elevator doors opened again on the third floor. “You never see anyone in the lobby, hallways or even waiting for the elevator. I noticed that when Otto and I went to those apartments this morning.”
When they reached Susan’s apartment, Danski pressed the buzzer and stepped back.
***
When Susan opened the door she seemed to be in a better mood than she was for their last meeting. Suspiciously better, Danski thought. Her eyes were a little glossy. At first, he thought she’d been crying, but upon closer examination he realized they were a drinker’s eyes. People who like to be alone when they drink usually drift in and out of reality. Emotions become stretched and jumbled. Joy and ecstasy, sorrow and regret become blurred; memories become clouded, until only one of them emerges – either regret or optimism. Today it seemed that pleasure and optimism had won the battle.
Danski considered himself an expert on the subject. He realized now why Susan was so moody at times and why she had so many different faces when she opened her apartment door and greeted them. There was no odor, making him suspe
ct that vodka was her choice of poison. He really couldn’t fault her. She might have been a social drinker five years ago and increased her intake when her whole world collapsed around her. He would be the last person to criticize if that was what helped her cope.
“Good morning Detectives.”
“We need to talk,” Danski said.
“Yes, of course,” she said and then stepped aside to let them in. “I can put on a pot of coffee if you like.”
“Yes, please go right ahead. I could certainly use a cup,” Danski said without hesitation thinking it might be good for Susan, too. It might make her feel more useful and talkative.
“I spoke with the new owner at Oscar’s this morning,” Danski told her minutes later as she poured coffee for him.
“It’s been more than five years,” Susan said with a slight grin as she moved on to Litchfield and poured again. “He’s not really a new owner anymore.”
“Yes, agreed,” Danski said. “He remembers Aaron, but he claims he hasn’t seen him since he fired him five years ago. You told us you were sure he isn’t Jake’s biological father, but it would have still been good to talk with him for the record, so we’ll keep looking.”
Susan smiled. “I understand. You need to cross your T’s and dot your I’s, right?”
Danski nodded. “Have you thought of anything that might help us locate Aaron?”
“No,” Susan answered and then twisted her mouth. “But like I’ve said before, there’s an extremely small chance that Aaron’s Jake’s father, I don’t think it’s worth the trouble looking for him. And to my knowledge he wasn’t a diabetic. He didn’t wear a medical bracelet, anyway. And, he never had a key to this apartment.”
“All good points,” Danski said. “In that case let’s concentrate on Adam Matthews.”
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