“Here’s what I don’t understand,” Catalano told them. “No one came in who didn’t live in the building—not until the deliveryman appeared with a package for Mr. Mayhew. That’s when I buzzed him. When he didn’t answer, I decided just to go up and check on him. And then I got in the elevator, and smelled the smoke and...” He lifted his hands.
“You never left your post?” Craig asked him.
“Not even to pee?” Mike added a little indelicately.
But Catalano shook his head. “My shift is 8:00 p.m. to 4:00 a.m. I make it a point to go before I’m on the clock, and watch the liquids before I start, as well. At midnight, I do take a five-minute break. I lock the main doors before I do so, and you see where we are now—and that our toilet is right there. I’m not away for more than a few minutes. I wouldn’t be. When residents have visitors, they must check in. Remember, now I can send someone up with the master key, but each resident has keys that only open on their floors.”
“So, tell us who came and went once you came on shift,” Craig said. “We’ll roll the tape at speed, and you can tell us about everyone as we see them.”
For a moment Catalano looked confused.
“Joey, they’ll fast-forward the footage,” Simon Wrigley explained. “Somehow, someone got into this building. Either that, or...”
“Or someone who lives in the building killed him,” Craig said.
Joey nodded and spun his chair around to the computer, then cued the footage to show at high speed. Each time the door opened, he hit the pause button.
“That’s Mr. and Mrs. Mobley, Toni and Teri,” he said. He looked back at Craig. “They’ve been here for six years—nice people. They’d been to the new Italian place on Fifth Ave.” He paused. “You know that the police already went through the footage, copied it, and sent it on, right?”
“I’m sure it’s at your headquarters by now,” Simon Wrigley assured them. “It’s like this guy—this killer—was a magician, or Spider-Man. I sure can’t begin to figure how he got in here!”
“We’ll study it again later,” Mike said. “For now, please keep going.”
“Okay...”
The next stop was for a single young woman. “Sienna Johnson,” Catalano said. “Floor number six—she lives alone. Trust-fund baby, but super nice.”
“Thank you, go on,” Craig said.
The next person they saw was a man in a hoodie exiting the building. He had a little dog on a leash.
“Mr. Blom, fourth floor—and Ruff. Good little dog. You know how the little ones can be such yappers? Not Ruff—great manners. And a good companion for Mr. Blom. He’s a great guy.”
“Nice. You know all the tenants,” Craig said.
“It’s an old building, refurbished,” Wrigley explained. “Just eight stories, and now every one of them is an individual apartment. We do know everyone who lives here—as you can imagine. The few tenants pay for us—the security team—and for maintenance. You can figure just what that costs them per month.”
“Roll again,” Craig said.
Catalano did so. A messenger in a popular courier company’s uniform arrived and left.
Mr. Blom—floor four—returned with Ruff.
Then, the UPS man with his package. They saw Catalano try to buzz Mayhew. They watched the video of Catalano dutifully locking the door before heading to the elevator. He hit Stop when his image disappeared as the door closed. They knew what had happened next.
“I know you’re going to want to talk to the tenants again,” Catalano said, “but do you think it could wait until morning? If they can sleep, they’re asleep. They’re all retired or Monday to Friday nine-to-fivers, except for Sienna Johnson, and she’s just...rich. And Charles Mayhew, except...well.”
“Yes, that’s fine. We’ll be back early,” Craig said.
“It’s out now about Raoul Nicholson,” Wrigley said. “You all had him behind bars. And now this. There you are—a perfect argument for the death penalty. For a man like Nicholson, who admitted his guilt, who killed so many people, innocent people—he needs to be executed.”
“Ah, but new evidence has proven a lot of men on death row or in for life to be innocent,” Mike reminded him. “Better for two guilty persons go free than one innocent man be condemned—or something like that.”
“Benjamin Franklin took that statement—almost word for word—from Voltaire, I believe,” Craig said. He looked at Simon Wrigley. “We don’t make the laws, sir. That’s the US Congress and the governing body of the State of New York. If this was Raoul Nicholson, we will catch him again.”
“And how many will die before?” Wrigley asked. “Poor Joey here is going to live with Mr. Mayhew’s death the rest of his days. You’re going to torment the tenants, unnerve them all over again, and Nicholson is your killer. You let that bastard get out, and he got in here somehow.”
“Possibly, and possibly not,” Craig said flatly. They needed to leave before he lost his temper.
Workers at Rikers did their best with a massive population of detainees—from those who had committed minor infractions to cold-blooded rapists, murderers, child abusers, and more. He wasn’t happy about Nicholson’s escape, but it wasn’t anyone’s fault unless someone had knowingly helped him.
“We’ll interview the residents bright and early, Mr. Wrigley, if you’ll be so good as to make sure they’re aware we’ll need to see them. We’ll be back by 8:00 a.m. Right now, we need to know more about the master keys.”
“Key,” Wrigley corrected him. “There is only one here. It’s passed from guard to guard.”
“And there are no other copies?” Mike asked, a frown on his face and doubt in his words.
“One more—but not here, kept in a safe at our office’s headquarters on Forty-Second Street off Broadway,” Wrigley said. “My family has been in business since the First World War. We’re highly respected. We’ve learned through the years how to become more and more secure. There’s never been any kind of a break-in at this building.”
“Until now,” Mike said. That caused Wrigley to stiffen.
“You’re suggesting it was an inside job? People are vetted before they move in here. My guards are bonded. Our residents are innocent of this. I’d bet my life on it. You people let Nicholson escape—let this death be on you. Somehow, Charles Mayhew himself must have brought this man in. My guards know how important it is that a master key is never—never—out of their hands, except when it is passed on to his shift relief!”
They’d made him angry; there was no point arguing with an angry man.
Craig looked at Joey Catalano. The young man still seemed to carry a light tinge of green about him.
“You’re sure you had your key all night.”
“Oh, yes, sir, I’m positive.”
“Thank you both. There will be an officer just outside all evening. He’ll be watching over everyone here,” Craig said.
Joey Catalano nodded. Simon Wrigley just glared at them.
As they crossed the lobby, Craig muttered, “Didn’t mean to piss him off.”
“Oh, he seems like he’s just pissy in general,” Mike said. “Like it or not, a brutal murder happened while his guard was on duty. He’s trying to throw blame at someone else. So he’s looking at Rikers.”
“Yeah,” Craig agreed. He hesitated with his hand on the door. “Just a minute. I want to see the crime scene head. I think it’s a guy named Corwin Booth tonight.”
“It is. Why?”
“They need to look for a note. Nicholson sent each of his victims a note before he killed them, almost as if he was giving them a chance to change their ways, or the least confess their sins and die with...their souls clean, perhaps, in his mind.”
Mike nodded. “I’ll get the guard to get us up there.”
The new guy was on the door, much older than Joey Catalano, an
d gray all around. His beard was the color of steel and his buzzed hair matched. His face even seemed to have a cast of the color.
He nodded grimly, though, accompanying them to the elevator, sliding in the flat metal key that would bring them up to the right apartment, and then leaving them on their way in the tiny elevator.
Up in the apartment, Layton and the body were gone. A crew of four techs still worked the scene. Craig quickly found Corwin Booth—a slender man in his early thirties—moving quickly around the room, wearing rimless glasses and a face mask against the lingering smell of burned flesh.
“See if you can find a note, Booth, please,” Craig told him.
“A warning note?” Booth asked, clearly familiar with Nicholson’s MO.
Craig nodded.
“We’ll dig through everything here. My team is good. If it’s here, we’ll find it.”
“Check the trash, everything,” Mike added.
Booth smiled with no amusement. “That’s a given, Special Agent,” he said.
Mike winced. “Sorry. It’s just—”
“Yeah, I worked a few of the Nicholson scenes. He sent a note every time. But if we don’t find one, it might not mean anything. How could he have gotten such a note out from Rikers?”
“How could he have gotten himself out from Rikers?” Mike replied.
“Touché, Special Agent Dalton, touché,” Booth told him. “But...so far, we haven’t come up with anything. We’ll be here through the night though. I’ll call if we do find a note. But I have a feeling we won’t. I have a feeling this wasn’t him.”
“You don’t think Nicholson did this? What’s different?” Craig asked.
Booth shook his head. “Just... The other victims weren’t found inside. They were found in alleys. So...the body is very similar. As for anything else, I’m still looking.”
“But what do you think?” Craig asked him.
“Hey, I’m not paid to think. I collect evidence, and evidence speaks for me.”
“You interpret it, too,” Craig reminded him.
“Yeah, well...”
“Yeah, well...what?” Craig prodded.
“You can’t interpret a hunch, and it isn’t evidence. Something feels wrong. Maybe it’s just logic. Maybe even if this guy got out of Rikers—and prisoners have escaped from max security prisons—I don’t like the timing. This had to have been scoped out and planned. So... I don’t know. It isn’t evidence, and if you prove that Nicholson did it, well... I’ll accept it.”
He looked away uncomfortably.
“Thanks,” Craig told him. “Really—thanks.”
He and Mike headed back to the elevator. They didn’t need a key to go down; the large G was the only button that would respond to any touch.
There had to be more. It wasn’t a magician or Spider-Man who had gotten in and strangled, sliced, gouged, and set Mayhew on fire.
It had been a killer, a man or a woman, cold-blooded and calculating...
One who had studied the building, the residents, and found whatever it was that Craig and Mike were missing.
* * *
In the middle of the night, Kieran rolled over and stretched out an arm, still half asleep, but certain that she would touch a warm body.
There was no one.
That woke her up, and she bolted to a sitting position. The room had a dim glow from the streetlights outside below her windows—she had fallen asleep with the blinds still open.
She fumbled for the TV remote control and quickly searched for a twenty-four-hour news station. It was a national news channel; still, she saw the escape of Raoul Nicholson was still taking center stage, along with the murder of New York entrepreneur and philanthropist Charles Mayhew. As of now, few details were available, other than the man had been murdered in his Upper East Side apartment.
A tidal wave in the Pacific was the next item. So far, it wasn’t threatening land.
She turned to the bedside table and found her phone. It was 4:00 a.m.
Worried, she keyed quickly to her messages and breathed a sigh of relief.
Craig had sent a text. He was fine; he wouldn’t be home until midday sometime. He asked her to stay with Kevin, suggesting she lend a hand to the waitresses at Finnegan’s come morning, or maybe catch Kevin’s show again. She read the rest aloud to herself. “‘Don’t want you worrying about me, and I don’t want to be worrying about you. We’ll get Nicholson, but you were one of the last people to see him before he pulled the stunt that got him to the infirmary.’”
She set the phone down, wishing she hadn’t awakened.
It was the middle of the night, and now all she would do was sit there and be worried.
Craig hadn’t given her any details on the case he was working—she knew it was the murder of Charles Mayhew. Such a thing would keep an agent like Craig out all night.
She started to set the phone down and then realized she also had a message from Craig’s immediate superior, Richard Egan.
Kieran, we’ll get you down to the offices here tomorrow sometime. You might be able to give us something. Miro and Fuller will come in as well. All hands on deck with Nicholson on the loose.
She stared at the message a long time. She’d been involved with cases before that had brought her in close contact with Egan. He was Craig’s boss but a friend, as well.
She wondered, though, if it had occurred to Craig yet that—whether he liked it or not—she was involved in this case, and that Egan might call her in.
She had been the last person to interview Nicholson. Which made her wonder about the time she had spent with the man. He had so freely confessed; he had tried so hard to make her understand his reasons for murder were not just good, they were valiant. But all the while, he had to have been planning his escape. It must have been difficult to manage—not only did he have to get by medical personnel, but guards. And when he got by both, he still had to get out of the facility and off the island.
He had to have been in the infirmary before, watched every move made by the doctors and nurses and the guards there.
She thought about the layout of the place and determined he must have somehow stolen a uniform and ID belonging to someone not well-known—a new psychiatrist, doctor, or perhaps, even a guard. If he’d managed such a feat, then he might have walked right out.
Except his face had been plastered over the news time and time again over the last months.
She rose, finding one of her terry robes, and walked downstairs.
To her surprise, she found Kevin was awake as well, still seated on the sofa, hunched over his phone. She took a seat next to him.
“Hey!” he said, surprised to see her. “You’re up.”
“I don’t have a matinee performance tomorrow,” she chastised.
“I’m fine,” he assured her.
“Working on something?” she asked.
“Yeah,” he said, and then he looked at her. “No.”
“What are you doing?”
“Looking up killers who claimed they heard voices...or a higher power or whatever. Did you know there’s an annual World Voices Hearing Congress that takes place? Several hundred people take part in it. They eschew the idea that the voices they hear are a symptom of mental illness and instead learn how to get along with them.”
“I know many people hear voices, and they may mean many things,” Kieran said. “But most people don’t allow a voice to tell them to kill.”
“It’s a common enough defense,” Kevin told her. He shrugged. “Makes me glad I’m an actor. I hear voices all the time—but they’re lines in reply to mine when I’m learning a script on my own. But for instance the Son of Sam—a dog told him to kill. The BTK killer said a demon got into him at an early age and forced him to kill. I’ve been reading about dozens of cases—a mom who threw her son off a bridge, a woma
n who heard the walls telling her she had to kill her neighbor...so much more.”
“Most of the time, they are suffering from psychosis or schizophrenia,” Kieran said.
“Or maybe they’re making it up to get away with murder.”
She nodded and repeated softly, “Or they’re making it up to get away with murder.”
Kevin nodded and yawned. “Well, my call isn’t until 11:00 tomorrow. I guess I’ll try to get some sleep. Are you coming with me in the morning or am I taking you to the pub?”
Kieran groaned. “You don’t have to take me anywhere.”
“Yes, I do. I don’t want to get on Craig’s bad side,” he said lightly.
Kieran shook her head. “Richard Egan wants to see me—Craig’s boss. How does that sound for safe?”
“You never stay safe,” Kevin said softly but seriously. “Luckily, if you have a voice, it’s some kind of a guardian angel.”
“And I’m really not stupid,” she said.
He looked at her and shrugged. “There have been moments when you could have fooled me.”
She picked up a cushion from the sofa and hit him over the head with it.
He laughed. “Okay, I’m going to bed. Honestly. You should sleep, too.”
“I’m going up. Night, bro, love you.”
He headed to the guest room; she went back up the stairs.
There was no way she was going back to sleep. She was far too restless. She decided to rent a comedy they’d missed at the movies that she’d really wanted to see.
It barely held her attention. But it did do something for her—it let her fall asleep.
When she woke, this time there was a warm body beside her. She curled close instinctively as she opened her eyes.
Craig was next to her. But he wasn’t sleeping. He was staring up at the ceiling.
He realized she was awake and pulled her close. She started to speak but saw his grim expression.
And so, she kept silent and lay next to him.
When he was ready, he would talk.
She was dreading what he was going to have to say.
CHAPTER FOUR
The Final Deception Page 5