Byron located the fledgling development a quarter mile prior to the Portland/Falmouth town line. The newly paved road wound snakelike through several dozen oversized colonial and Cape Cod style homes, each in various stages of completion. Gravel seemed to be the common landscaping material thus far.
He parked next to a newly installed granite curbstone in front of two houses that, in addition to having the most activity surrounding them, appeared to be nearly finished. Exiting the car, he noticed an unoccupied city inspector’s vehicle parked across the street, a former police cruiser repainted a nauseating shade of purple with a brightly colored City of Portland seal affixed to the driver’s door. When it came to fleet automobiles, the Port City had been recycling well before it was fashionable. Experience had taught Byron that wherever the inspector was located, so too would be the site boss, most likely negotiating his position.
The man Byron sought nearly collided with him as he hurried through the left-hand home’s breezeway door. The stocky man wearing a red Custom Coastal ball cap was fuming and muttering to himself as he paused in the driveway to light a cigarette.
“Excuse me,” Byron said.
“Yeah. Sorry about that.”
“I’m looking for the site foreman.”
“Well, you found him. Name’s Al. Did I fuck up something else?”
“What do you mean?” Byron asked, not understanding the question.
Al inhaled deeply then expelled twin plumes of smoke from his nostrils, reminding Byron of a bull. “With the city, right? Car gave you away. Let me guess, code enforcement?”
Byron dug the police identification out of his coat pocket. “I am with the city. Different department, though. Detective Sergeant John Byron.”
“Al Dunn,” he said, sticking out a sweaty paw to shake Byron’s hand.
Byron suppressed the urge to smile as he wondered how much fun the other contractors had with that name. “I’m trying to locate a guy named Morgan Bates. I was told he works here.”
“One of my better framers,” Dunn said before taking another long drag off his cigarette. “Tell me you’re not about to make my day worse by busting him for something.”
Byron wondered what it said when Dunn’s first thought was that Byron was there to arrest Bates. “I only want to talk with him.”
Dunn cast a wary eye at Byron. “Just talk, huh?” He took one last drag before tossing the butt down on the gravel driveway and crushing it under his boot. “Okay. Give me a minute. I gotta fix the mess your inspector’s making, then I’ll take you to Bates.”
Five minutes later, Byron was following the dust cloud kicked up by Dunn’s pickup on the short drive to the other end of the development. They found Danica Faherty’s former beau on the second floor of an open structure working with another man. The two men were attaching cripple studs between roof joists with pneumatic framing nailers when the foreman hollered for Bates to take a break.
Dunn turned to Byron. “You good?”
“Yeah, thanks, Al. I’ll take it from here.”
Dunn returned to his truck and raced off in another cloud of dust.
The two framers strolled out of the building. The bearded one with dark hair, the one who wasn’t Bates, headed off toward the side yard with his cell stuck to his ear. Bates approached Byron carrying a large insulated water bottle. He was shirtless, deeply tanned and muscular, dressed in green carpenter pants and tan work boots, with a spattering of sawdust stuck to his sweaty torso. His wavy blond hair, on the longish side of professional, wouldn’t have cut it in a police uniform but would have been considered too short for undercover narcotics work.
“Help ya?” Bates said after taking an extra-long swig from the stainless-steel bottle and wiping his mouth with the palm of his hand.
Byron produced his police ID. “My name is Detective Sergeant John Byron. Are you Morgan Bates?”
“That’s what it says on my driver’s license.”
Byron studied him, wondering if his fellow construction workers found his witty banter as cute as the Old Port crowd most likely had when he was still tending bar at Alessandro’s.
“Do you know a woman named Danica Faherty?”
“Sure, I know her. She’s my girlfriend.”
“How long have you been seeing her?” Byron asked, playing along with the lie.
“Not sure that’s any of your business, Slick.” Bates leaned forward and poured a small amount of water over his overheated head. He stood upright and took another drink then spit it out on the ground between them. He grinned at Byron.
Byron returned the grin but there was no humor behind it. “Reason I ask is because I heard the two of you split months ago.”
“Where’d you hear that? Let me guess, Destiny.”
Byron said nothing.
“She’s got a big mouth.”
“Is it true?” Byron asked without confirming the source. “Had the two of you broken up?”
“I guess. Dani said she wanted some space. I think she’s coming around, though.”
“Meaning back to you?”
“Hard to say no to this,” Bates said, cocking a thumb in his own direction.
Byron’s disdain for the arrogant young man was growing by the second. “You still haven’t asked me.”
“Asked you what?”
“Why I’m here. Why I asked about Danica. I would think, being her ex-boyfriend and all, you might be concerned that something bad had happened to her.”
Something almost imperceptible shifted in Bates’s arrogant expression. “Did something bad happen to her? That why you’re here?”
“She’s dead, Morgan. We found her body this morning.”
Bates stood slack-jawed for a moment. Byron tried to gauge the reaction. If the ex-boyfriend was acting, and he wouldn’t be the first, he was damn good at it.
“How?” Bates asked at last.
“We believe she was murdered.” Byron waited a tick while the news sunk in. “When did you last see her?”
Bates opened his mouth to speak then closed it, eyes narrowing. “You think I killed her, don’t you? That’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know whether you did or didn’t have anything to do with her death, Morgan. But, assuming you didn’t, I would think you’d want to do everything you could to help us find the person or persons responsible. So, let’s try this again. When did you last see Dani Faherty?”
“Can’t remember.”
“Okay, then where were you Sunday morning?”
“I was with Steve, a buddy of mine.”
“Steve?”
“Holcolm. We were hanging out Saturday night till about noon on Sunday.”
“Great. I’ll need a statement from both of you.”
Bates took another swig of water, this time swallowing it. The arrogant smirk returned. “Ya know what? Think I want to talk to a lawyer.”
Chapter 8
Wednesday, 4:30 p.m.,
July 12, 2017
Diane was on her office phone in the process of leaving yet another voicemail message for Portland Herald reporter Davis Billingslea when her cellphone lit up with an incoming call from him. She disconnected the call mid-message and grabbed her cell off the desk.
“I’ve been trying to reach you for hours,” she snapped. “Why didn’t you call me back?”
“Wasn’t aware that I worked for you,” Billingslea said.
Diane bit her tongue. She needed this conversation to go well and telling Billingslea off, although pleasurable, would not help her cause. “Tell me you haven’t released the information you think you have about the condition of the body we recovered this morning.”
“Hmm, that sounds an awful lot like confirmation, Sergeant Joyner. Are you saying that the victim was decapitated?”
“I’m not saying any such thing, Davis. We recovered a body, period. What I am telling you is if you put that out there you may well screw up another case.”
“My source is solid. Sa
id they saw the body.”
Diane considered what Billingslea was saying. So far as she knew, only a handful of investigators had been privy to the condition of Faherty’s body. “Who’s your source?”
“You know it doesn’t work like that. If I’m right, and this is connected to the Horseman murders, it could be the biggest story I’ll ever cover. Might even get a book deal out of it from one of the Big Five. Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t run with what I already have.”
Diane scrambled to think of something that would be too tempting not to consider. “What if you are right?” she said at last.
“What do you mean?” Billingslea asked. His suspicion was obvious.
“Just what I said. What if you’re right and the body we found this morning is connected to those other murders? Would you rather report the connection or be the one who gets first crack at the story when we solve the case?”
“You’re promising me an exclusive on the Horseman case?”
“I’m not saying that our case is related to those others, Davis. What I am promising is to give you the exclusive when we solve this one. If you hold back now.”
“How do I know you guys will even be able to solve it? Christ, Boston Homicide hasn’t been able to.”
“Have you met John Byron?”
Billingslea was quiet for a moment. “Point taken. How long then?”
“Until we release the details.”
“You’re asking a lot.”
“Maybe. But if you’re right about the cases being linked, and we do solve it, you’ll be getting a lot.”
She held her breath while waiting for him to bite into the sharp hook she was dangling.
“I’ll think about it,” he said at last.
Byron left his business card with Bates after instructing him to have his attorney call. Byron wasn’t holding his breath. Frustrated, he drove back to 109 with a plan to crawl up into the ex-boyfriend’s business. Way up.
“Hey, Sarge,” Nugent said before Byron even made it into his office. “Dustin found some stuff from last weekend.”
“What kind of stuff?”
“About our victim. There was a 911 call made from the restaurant she works at, Alessandro’s, about having a customer removed for harassing an employee. Some guy named Gene Wagner.”
“Who was the employee?”
“Danica Faherty.”
Byron tossed his briefcase in the chair beside his desk. Nugent handed him the printout. “What happened?” Byron asked.
“Nothing. Wagner was gone by the time patrol officers got there. It’s not the first time with this guy, though.”
“Meaning?”
“Apparently, Wagner has a thing for her. He’s a regular at the bar.”
“Criminal record?”
“Other than a couple of OUI convictions, nothing interesting. I was gonna go talk to him, unless you’d like a shot.”
Byron thought about Destiny Collins’s comment about a prior violent encounter between Bates and Faherty. “No, have at him. I’ve got something else I want to follow up on.”
Byron descended the overly warm rear stairwell to 109’s second floor and its air-conditioned Records Division. After a quick but stern admonishment by the office manager, who was on her way out the door, about detectives misfiling reports, he found what he was looking for. Faherty’s report against Bates was tucked in among the 2015 case files which were still occupying one of the shelves inside the Lektriever, a gigantic floor-to-ceiling vertical file carousel. He made a copy of the entire report, replaced the original, then headed up to the computer crimes lab on the third floor.
Detective Dustin Tran, the PPD’s computer guru, was fond of saying if there was something that he couldn’t do on a computer, then it couldn’t be done. Tran’s office was situated across the hall from the Regional Crime Lab. The tiny space was both too small and too warm, due to a myriad of computer towers and high-definition screens that occupied every horizontal surface and were always powered on. They gave the place an oily, mechanical smell.
“Hey, Striped Dude,” Tran greeted as Byron entered the office. “Think I found some stuff you might want.”
Byron stood waiting as Tran shuffled through the mess of papers stacked on a side table.
“Here you go,” Tran said, handing Byron a short stack.
“What’s this?” Byron asked.
“I did a global search on Faherty, looking for prior and current addresses, family, friends, employment, criminal history, everything. It’s all in there.”
“Anything stand out?”
“Nothing recent. She had a motor vehicle accident in South Portland about three weeks ago, a speeding ticket last August, and she’s been listed as a witness to a couple of bad checks passed at the restaurant she works at. The only thing of note I could find happened near the end of 2015. It looks like a DV involving her boyfriend at the time. Some guy named—”
“Morgan Bates.”
Tran’s eyes widened in surprise. “How’d you do that so fast?”
Included in the domestic violence report were Bates’s arrest sheet, a supplemental report from the assigned detective, and a signed statement from Danica Faherty stating that she no longer wished to pursue assault charges against Morgan Bates.
With Bates having lawyered up prematurely, Byron decided that his next stop should be Alessandro’s, the restaurant where both Faherty and Bates had been employed. Perhaps the owners would be able to shed some additional light on the relationship.
Located on Fore Street, just east of Exchange, Alessandro’s was a swanky Mediterranean offshoot of its New York City predecessor. Both restaurants were owned by the Stavros family. Byron had never dined there, but he knew of the restaurant’s popularity and their month-plus waiting list. A self-proclaimed connoisseur of Thai takeout and burgers, Byron had never made a reservation more than two hours in advance.
He stepped inside the restaurant and found two dozen or so employees buzzing about like insects, setting up for the dinner crowd. The change in temperature was dramatic. The Fore St. sidewalk had been sweltering, but the air inside Alessandro’s was cool and dry. The space was open and airy, decorated in what Byron guessed was supposed to be an eclectic European style.
The ceiling of the former industrial space, with its massive wooden beams and metal air ducts, had been painted flat black. Strands of clear white lightbulbs hung in rows about twelve feet above the gleaming hardwood floor. Long high tables surrounded by black wooden stools, along with dark leather couches and exposed brick walls, dominated the lower dining area. A wrought iron staircase led to an upper loft. The kitchen space, featuring a thirty-foot-long arched pass-through, was open to the dining room, allowing customers to observe the food preparation. Having spent his youth watching his mother prepare every meal in the Byron kitchen, he couldn’t understand the public’s fascination with this trend.
“Can I help you?”
Byron turned to see an attractive young woman with dark hair pulled back into a long perfectly braided ponytail. She wore a white short-sleeved V-neck blouse, black skirt, and turquoise-colored waist sash. Her plastic name tag read: Sheila.
“I’m looking for the manager,” he said.
Sheila gave him a polite smile. “May I ask who’s looking?”
Byron produced his credentials. “Detective Sergeant John Byron. I’m here about one of the restaurant employees.”
“I’ll go find him for you.”
Byron returned the badge case to his jacket pocket and continued his visual tour of the restaurant while he waited. All the waitstaff were attired in the same white-and-black uniform that Sheila was wearing. The one variation was that the men wore white collared shirts and black slacks.
Several minutes later the young woman returned. She was accompanied by a handsome olive-skinned male. The man was drying his hands with a dish towel. “May I help you?” he asked.
“I hope so,” Byron said. “I’m looking for the manager.�
��
“Well then, I can definitely help you,” he said, extending a hand. “Petri Stavros, I am the manager. Sorry, still a little damp but clean.”
“Detective Sergeant John Byron,” he said, returning the gesture.
“Pleased to meet you, Detective Sergeant,” Stavros said. “What can I do for the police?”
Byron noticed the prying eyes of several members of the waitstaff. “Is there someplace we can speak privately?”
“Certainly. Follow me.”
Stavros led Byron through the kitchen, past a handful of employees dressed in chef garb, toward the rear of the building. The office was more luxurious than Byron had imagined. In fact, the furnishings were far better than even Chief Lynds’s office at 109. On the wall were dozens of framed black-and-white photos, each depicting the same woman. Some of the pictures were publicity shots while others, depicting her in costume, were obviously from various movie roles.
“Your mother?” Byron asked as he pointed to one of the photographs.
“Angelina,” Stavros said. “Lina for short. Glamorous, isn’t she?”
“She is. Does she ever come in?”
Stavros laughed. “Nearly every night. In addition to being the owner, she’s the star power that packs this place. They come to see her.”
Byron noticed a framed color photo sitting atop the desk of two young children and a very attractive woman. “Yours?”
“My sister-in-law, Deborah, and her children. Lina spoils them rotten.”
“I’ll bet. Your niece and nephew?”
“Correct. Kaia and Leander. Deborah is married to my brother Alessandro, Alex for short. He’s the head chef here. You may have heard of him. Had his own cooking show.”
“I don’t watch much television.”
“Sit, please.”
Byron sat.
“So, what can I help you with?”
“I’m here to ask you about a couple of your employees.”
“Which ones?”
“Morgan Bates and Danica Faherty.”
Stavros grimaced. “Morgan no longer works here. I fired him about six months ago.”
Within Plain Sight Page 6