Jack in the Box

by Blake Banner

  “Stop saying that.”

  “Step back before it is too late. Release me. Cut the bonds and take the wire from my throat. It is not too late to make this right. Do it now and I promise you, I promise you I will help you find redemption. The judge, the jury, they will show leniency.”

  Again the sad smile. “You are a brave man, a warrior. I admire your spirit. You don’t give up. But you are out of time. Make peace. The time to die is now.”

  I saw her hand move. I felt the sharp pain, and then there was nothing.

  * * *

  Dehan and Deputy Inspector Newman stood outside the observation booth for interrogation room three. Newman was not happy, and neither was Dehan.

  “You should not be conducting this investigation, Carmen. He is not only your partner, he’s your husband. Your objectivity is compromised.”

  “With all due respect, sir. My objectivity is not the issue here. The issue is finding Stone, and nobody in this precinct can do that better than I can.”

  “I want you to partner up with…”

  “Sorry, chief. That is not going to happen.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Priority one: find Stone. I do not need to be worrying about a new partner or whether I am being objective. I need to be interrogating my witness.”

  “Carmen.”

  “Sir, do you know why I was partnered with Stone?”

  “Carmen.”

  “We were partnered because there wasn’t a detective in the 43rd who would work with me because I had such a bad attitude, and Captain Cuevas wanted to punish Stone by partnering him with me.”

  “Carmen…”

  “Sir, I do not need to be worrying about hurting the feelings of some pussy-assed, chauvinistic dickhead when what I do need to be doing is finding Stone! I’m sorry! I won’t do it!”

  “Carmen!”

  “What?”

  “Shut up! Good Lord, woman! Go and find Stone!”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  With that, she turned and pushed into the interrogation room.

  Penelope was sitting at the table, looking pale and strained. Her eyes followed Dehan as she crossed the room and sat across the table from her.

  “OK, Penny, I am going to try and make this fast and easy for you. Where is Stone?”

  “I don’t know. I told you already. I-don’t-know.”

  “Fact: he went to your apartment. Fact: he was in your apartment. Fact: he has disappeared. Fact: he has not been seen since he arrived at your apartment. Fact: his car is still parked where he left it when he went to your apartment, and fact: nobody saw him leave your apartment or your apartment block. Now, you tell me what a jury is going to make of those facts. You tell me what, as a detective, I am supposed to make of those facts.”

  A spasm of irritation tightened Penelope’s face. “There is a fact you are missing, Detective Dehan! The fact that he was not at my apartment when you arrived and must therefore have left!”

  “Which leads us to the inescapable conclusion that he is still in that apartment block. So where have you got him? Where did you put him, Penelope?”

  “I didn’t put him anywhere. I don’t know where he is!”

  “Who are you working with?”

  “What?”

  “Who took Stone from your apartment?”

  “Are you out of your mind?”

  “Come on, Penelope! Cut the crap! We have cops crawling over that building like ants! You think we won’t find him? Do you know what will happen to you when we do find him?”

  “You are out of your mind! Why in the name of God would I abduct Detective Stone? What possible reason…”

  “What date have you set for your wedding, Penelope?”

  “What? Why…?”

  “Stephen, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, but threatening me won’t do you any good, because I don’t…”

  “Rich? Successful? Great prospects, right?”

  “Yes, but…”

  “So, just going out on a limb here, Penny, but I’m guessing that facing trial for the murder of Jack Connors would have been pretty damaging for your prospects of marrying a big shot Manhattan lawyer.”

  “Of course it would! But I am not crazy enough to kill a damned police officer because of it! I am not insane! And who the hell do you think my accomplice is? Mrs. Brown upstairs? She’s eighty-four next June! Or perhaps the Epsteins next door?”

  “Or perhaps it’s Grant Shaw.”

  “This again? OK, so we stayed friends. I lied about us falling out. But it was exactly because of this bullshit! I knew that you would do this! I have not got a thing with Grant! We broke up years ago. We have barely stayed in touch. The son of a bitch couldn’t even keep his story straight when he spoke to you. You think if he was my ‘accomplice’—” She made speech marks in the air with her fingers. “—he would have told you I was going to marry Jack? No. He would have told you the same goddamn story I told you!”

  “Does he own a property in that block?”

  “No!” She did a kind of double-take. “No, you know what? I don’t know! Maybe he does? I don’t know what he owns in New York! Maybe he owns the whole goddamn block for all I know! Maybe he owns the whole fucking island!”

  “We’ll know very soon.”

  “Good! Maybe then you can give me a goddamn break! I have not abducted your partner! I am not that stupid! And I do not have an accomplice in some diabolical plot to abduct New York cops!”

  “What time did he arrive?”

  “Again?”

  “What time did he arrive?”

  “I told you. I don’t know the exact time. It was about…” She sighed. “It was about three hours ago, maybe more.”

  “What did you talk about?”

  “I told you already! He wanted to know why I’d lied. He wanted to know why I changed my phone. I told you already! Do I need a lawyer?”

  “It’s up to you. You’re engaged to a big shot, call him.”

  Her face said that wasn’t an option and she covered her eyes with her hands, then ran her fingers through her hair. “I want to cooperate, but you are making it so hard, Carmen.”

  “Where is Stone?”

  “I don’t know!”

  There was a knock at the door an a uniform poked his head in. “Detective, the Chief wants to see you.”

  “OK, I’ll be right there.” The uniform left and Dehan turned back to Penny. “I’ll be back. Meantime, you’d better do some serious thinking, Penny, because your story does not wash. I am going to keep coming at you and I will not stop until you tell me where Stone is.” She leaned forward across the table. “And if you have hurt him…”

  She left the sentence unfinished, stood and stepped out into the passage. The deputy inspector met her outside the door.

  “Just heard. Look, Carmen, I’m sorry, none of the apartments belong to Grant Shaw. There are a number of private owners, a couple of banks, investment companies. I’ve emailed you the list. But none of them are traceable to Shaw. Besides which, the officers have drawn a blank. They’ve gone over the building from the roof to the cellar. The neighbors were all cooperative and helpful. They have found nothing. It’s a dead end.”

  She stared at him for a long moment, then shook her head. “It doesn’t make sense. He has got to be in that building. He didn’t leave. Nobody saw him leave. His car was still there.”

  “He is not there, Carmen. Focus. John does not need a wife right now. What John needs is the best damn detective at the 43rd. Now focus! If he is not there, where is he?”

  She rubbed her face with her hands, took a deep breath, stared at the wall, then the ceiling, then at the inspector.

  “OK. Baby steps: he is not there, so he is somewhere else. Nobody saw him leave, so he left without being seen. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “So we need to be looking at people that left the building during that period, during that window, but were either not seen or not recognized. Stone
left, or somebody left with Stone, during those two hours, and somebody saw him, without realizing what they were seeing. Right?”

  “Exactly!”

  “Security cameras!”

  “Good! Go and get it.”

  She turned and pushed back into the interrogation room. She went to the table and leaned across, looking deep into Penelope’s eyes. “I need to know exactly what time Stone left your apartment.”

  “I don’t know exactly…”

  “He left here about ten, half an hour to get to you, maybe forty minutes to reach your apartment. How long were you talking?”

  “Not long, maybe twenty minutes or half an hour.”

  Dehan turned and bellowed, “Sergeant!” A sergeant poked her head around the door. “Take Ms. Peach to a holding cell.”

  She pushed out of the room again and made her way to the inspector’s door. She pushed in without knocking and he looked up at her.

  “Sir, the security camera footage from eleven AM and for the next hour. We need the elevator and the lobby. And hell! Anything else they have. But if he left the building, he will show up on that footage.”

  “I’ll call. You go. But Carmen…”

  “I know, sir. We are looking for someone… or something… that does not look like Stone… I know.”

  FIFTEEN

  She drove fast, back along the route she had taken earlier in the unmarked Dodge Charger with the siren howling to the fading afternoon. She screeched to a halt outside Penelope’s block and ran into the lobby. The porter was waiting for her with the security guard and led her to a small room in back, behind the desk. As they went, Dehan was talking to the security guard.

  “I want the ninth floor. I want the landing, I want the elevator and I want the lobby, ten minutes to eleven o’clock through to twelve noon. Everyone who comes out of the block. One of those people who comes out is my partner.”

  “Yes, ma’am. We don’t have cameras on the landings. But when your inspector called I started going through…”

  The porter interjected, “I told you your partner never came out, Detective.”

  “That’s the truth, ma’am, there ain’t no sign of him. I have the photograph your boys brought around earlier, and he never came out.”

  “Did anybody come out? Anyone moving furniture, laundry, carpets…?”

  “Nothing like that. Three people come out in the time you’re talking about, well, six, to be precise. We had…” He reversed to the beginning of the footage. “Ten minutes after eleven. This guy who’s come to collect a visitor of Mrs. Graham’s, on the seventh.”

  There was a slightly distorted image of a man perhaps in his early thirties entering the elevator, pushing a wheelchair with an old woman in it. A moment later, they disembarked and he wheeled her across the lobby and out into the street.

  “Then half past eleven, Mr. Hofstadter and a friend of his got in. I thought at first his friend might be your partner. He’s about the right size and build. But…”

  He trailed off and shrugged. The porter said, “Mr. Hofstadter’s been in the building twenty years…”

  Dehan peered at the image and decided it was inconclusive, but unlikely. The guard went on. “Then we got eleven fifty-five. Mrs. Petersen from the fifth floor and her sister. We can keep looking…”

  “I want copies of that footage… Go back. To eleven o’clock. Five past. This guy went to Mrs. Graham on the seventh?”

  “Yeah, this is just the footage of people leaving, but…”

  “Call her.”

  “What?”

  “Call her! Ask her if she had a disabled visitor, goddammit!”

  The porter ran to reception. “I’ll call!”

  “Now, replay it… Freeze it. There. Look at the digital display. What’s that number?”

  “Holy shit…”

  “It’s a nine. That old woman in the wheelchair is my partner.”

  The porter poked his head in. “I am so sorry. She didn’t have a visitor and nobody came with a wheelchair…”

  “Isolate that footage, send it to this email.” She handed him a card and turned to the porter. “Tell me you saw a van. Tell me you saw a vehicle. Tell me you saw which way they went.”

  The man’s face was a picture of distress. “I… He wheeled him out. I stayed in here. He might have turned right…”

  She pulled her cell from her pocket and dialed the inspector.

  “Carmen!”

  “Sir, he was wheeled out of here at ten past eleven this morning, in a wheelchair. He was covered in a couple of blankets and a hat, to make him look like an old lady. I’m having the footage sent over, maybe the lab can do something with it, but the guy doing the wheeling is nondescript and hard to identify.”

  Though even as she was saying it, something was nagging at her memory. She went on.

  “We need another team to canvass the area for anyone who saw a man pushing a wheelchair. They must have got into a vehicle. Someone might be able to identify the vehicle, or tell us which way it went.”

  “Dear God, Carmen. It is hard to believe. Who would do such a thing?”

  She nodded. “Somebody crazy. I’m going out to talk to the neighbors.”

  She stepped out into the late afternoon sunshine. The part of Riverside Drive where Penelope had her apartment was largely a residential area, and what few stores and businesses there were were mainly inside the buildings, and had no large plate glass storefronts that allowed a clear view of the street. So the first fifteen minutes of Dehan’s hunt for witnesses was largely fruitless, until she came to the Upper West Side Cooperative School on West 96th, around the corner from Penelope’s apartment block.

  The school was closed but, as she approached, beyond the iron railings she could see an elderly man in blue overalls with a wheelbarrow, tending to a small plot where a cherry tree was in blossom, surrounded by springtime flowerbeds. She took out her badge and held it through the rails, then stuck her fingers in her mouth and emitted a shrill whistle that might have shattered glass.

  The guy straightened and turned. She waved her badge at him and called out, “Detective Dehan, NYPD!”

  He ambled over to her and leaned on the green rails. He smiled without malice and said, “Dehan, huh? What’s a nice girl like you doing in an outfit like that?”

  “What can I tell you? My first choice was ballet, but my toes were too long. Were you here at eleven this morning?”

  “Sure. I been here all day.”

  “I’m looking for witnesses who saw a man in his late twenties, early thirties, wheeling an old woman in a wheelchair. You see anything like that?”

  “Yeah, sure. She was a weird lookin’ woman, too. Big. That woman made some man’s life a misery, I’m tellin’ you. At the time she looked quiet, like maybe she was sleeping. He wheels her up the hill. You could tell she was heavy, cause this kid was struggling. Big hands, big feet. The woman, not the kid. Looked like a man, only she had this floppy hat with flowers on it. You wouldn’t want to marry a woman like that.”

  “Where’d they go?”

  “He had a van parked right there, across the road. Wheeled the chair into the van and secured it. Then drove away, like he was headed for the Hudson Parkway.”

  “You didn’t get the plates…?”

  “Nah. They was odd, you know? An odd couple. But I didn’t think it was nothin’ criminal.”

  “You said the guy pushing was a kid?”

  He made a rueful smile. “At my age, everyone’s a kid. I guess he was what you said, late twenties, early thirties, medium height, medium build, kinda hard to describe. He was so normal.”

  “What kind of van was it?”

  “White Savannah, tinted windows. Had a side door with a ramp, to get the chair up.” A cloud seemed to pass over the man’s face. “He gonna hurt that woman?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to avoid. That woman is a six-foot-two mensch who also happens to be my partner and my husband.”

  “I’m
sorry to hear that, Detective Dehan. I guess he’d make a better husband than a wife.”

  “Yeah, he makes a pretty good husband. Any distinguishing features on the van? Anything to make it stand out from other white Savannahs…?”

  He shrugged and looked momentarily helpless. “It was real clean. Actually, spotless. But there were no logos, no stickers, nothin’. All white with tinted windows. That’s it.”

  “Tinted windows?”

  “Yeah, along the back.”

  She nodded. “OK, thanks.”

  “Hope you find him, Detective Dehan.”

  She turned and walked down the road, back toward Penelope’s apartment block. On the way she put out a BOLO for the van. It was a forlorn hope, but it was something. Then she called Inspector Newman again.

  “Carmen, what news?”

  “He was loaded into a white Savannah on West 96th by a man in his late twenties or early thirties. Medium height, medium build, nondescript. I put out a BOLO on the van. We’ll need the CCTV footage from the Upper West Side Cooperative School on West 96th, also the neighboring streets. Maybe we can get a license plate and see where he was going. Seems he was headed for the Hudson Parkway.”

  “I’ll take care of that, Carmen. What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to talk to Penelope again. Sir? Can you take Consuelo off the search for decapitated bodies and get her searching for vehicles registered to Penelope Peach, Grant Shaw, Alornerk Smith in Boston and Helena Magnusson, also Shaw Line and Connors Communication. I want to see if that throws up any white Savannahs.”

  “Of course, good thinking. Listen, Carmen, I really want you to consider taking a new partner for the remainder of this case.”

  “Sir, I’ll take care of it myself if you are too busy…”

  “Don’t be impertinent, Carmen. That was not my point. You need support!”

  “I need Stone, sir.”

  He sighed. “Very well. I’ll see to this.”

  “Thank you, sir.”