by Blake Banner
“Is it?”
“Honestly, I don’t know.”
“There is another question, which frankly he dodged last night, about why he was so convinced the case needed to be looked into more deeply. I mean, let’s face it, the fact that he and Robles were lovers makes it more likely, not less, that Agnes killed him. One thing is being dumped for another woman—at least Ali is gorgeous and shared all of Robles’ tastes and prejudices—but to be dumped for a guy? That’s got to hurt. That could tip a neurotic woman over the edge.”
“It’s a good point.”
“And it’s an important question.” She stated it with emphasis, “What made Costas so convinced that Agnes did not kill Dr. Robles?”
I nodded. “It is an important question, the more so because he must have known, when he pressed the chief, that a deeper investigation risked revealing his relationship with Robles.”
She shrugged. “I don’t see any option. We have to tell him.”
“Let’s get Am and Mohamed out of the way, then we’ll talk to the inspector about Costas and where the case seems to be going.” I sighed and held up both hands, like I was holding two oranges. “There’s his personality and his sex life, here, on the left. And then there is his research, here, on the right. On the left you have Mohamed, Ali, Agnes and Costas Varufakis. On the right you have his actual, physical research, the bit that’s missing, Dr. Meigh and Am.” I paused. “Thinking aloud, we originally thought that Mohamed was on the right, but he turned out to be part of his sex life.”
We were quiet for a while, staring at the empty place in space where we both imagined the small clusters of people and facts. Then Dehan said, “Maybe that’s just it, Stone. Maybe they are, in actual fact, separate. Maybe there is no connection between the two. Maybe he had such a damned awful attitude, such a conflictive approach to life, that he generated hostility and problems wherever he went. And that is what gives us the illusion that it is all connected to his death.”
I frowned. “Explain.”
“OK, the world is divided into those who thought Robles was great, and those who thought he was a royal pain in the ass. Now, just imagine, a department of nice, nerdy scientists who all get on together and either have chess evenings smoking pipes, or play Lord of the Rings and Halo games together. They are all happy in Nerd Land. And then, one day, El Grincho comes along, sneering at everything, putting everybody down, playing his power games, insulting everybody and generally being a pain in the butt. Everybody wants him to leave, but, there’s a problem.”
I said, “He’s a very good scientist and he is contributing radical ideas to the research.”
“Exactly. So they have to put up with him. That’s what’s going on in the right-hand bubble. Now, meantime, in the left-hand bubble, we see that his desire to put everybody down and play power games is nothing more than an expression of his sexual proclivities.”
“Who are you? And what have you done with Dehan? Where did you learn such language?”
“I told you, from your books. Robles has a compulsive, sexual need to dominate people or be dominated by them. This draws people like Agnes into a dependent relationship with him. She needs him, badly, but he refuses to get involved with her romantically, yet at the same time refuses to set her free. Double bind. The first humiliation comes in the form of Ali, and then the final straw is Mohamed and/or Costas. She snaps and kills him.” I drew breath but she held up a hand. “Meanwhile, presented with his death, Dr. Meigh does two things. One, she shelters Agnes, and two, she holds back the key part of his research, planning to present it later as either her own or the work of the team. The team quietly acquiesce—all, that is, but Am Nielsen.”
I thought about it for a while. Finally, I said, “That is a very compelling piece of reasoning, Dehan. I like it very much. It’s brilliant.”
“Gee. Shucks, boss.”
I glanced at her. “What about the gun?”
“As you would say, two gets you twenty she got that from Dr. Meigh. We need to look into her. Maybe her husband was a Marine, or at least military. My bet is she got it from her old pal, Meigh, who later sheltered her.”
I thought about the man I’d seen Meigh kiss and hand over the keys to the Audi. He didn’t look especially lethal, but you couldn’t always tell. “If that’s true, then it elevates Meigh’s involvement to conspiracy to commit murder.”
“Yeah.”
I looked at my watch. It was five past nine. “He’s late.” We stared at each other for a moment. “Once we have his testimony, we go back to Meigh and demand to see the missing part of the research.”
“What about Mohamed?”
“We’ll get Gomez to take it. I want to talk to Meigh before they go on holiday.”
Dehan gave a single nod. “If we can get her to admit to that much, maybe we can use it as leverage to force her to give up Agnes…” We stared at each other a moment longer and she shrugged. “That’s what this whole thing comes down to now, Stone, isn’t it? Find Agnes.”
“I guess…” I looked at my watch again. Ten past. I pulled out my cell and called Am. I got a message saying it was switched off or out of range. “He’s not coming.”
She frowned. “Come on! He’s probably on the subway.”
I shook my head. “He’s not coming. Get your woolly hat, Dehan. I’m going to call Hays and try Am again. You put out a BOLO, and arrange for a car to go to the university. We’re going to his house.”
She stood, looking at me as though I’d gone crazy. “Why? He’s ten minutes late, Stone!”
“Because we are missing something and I don’t know what it is. But believe me, he is not coming!”
I ran down the stairs dialing Hays’ number. It rang a couple of times before he answered.
“You again, Detective.”
“Yeah, me again. Is Am Nielsen there? Have you seen him today?”
“He isn’t here and I haven’t seen him. He’s probably still in bed. It’s barely a quarter past nine!”
“I know what time it is. The moment you see him, you call me. Tell him to stay put. I’ll come and get him.”
“Is that an order?”
“Yes.”
His tone was sarcastic, mine wasn’t. I hung up and went to the detectives’ room to grab my coat. When I stepped outside, it had started to drizzle, but the drizzle was turning to a fine sleet. I opened the door and Dehan came out of the station, swaddled in wool, and ran across the road to join me. As we climbed in, she said, “Time to share, big guy. You know it makes me mad when you cut me out.”
I reversed out of the lot, turned into Metcalf, crossed the Bruckner Expressway and joined the boulevard on the other side, going west. There I hit the gas, headed for Hunts Point.
“I don’t know, Dehan. I’m as confused as you are. Everything you said makes sense. But Am doesn’t make sense. He doesn’t fit with the logical explanation. I can’t put it into words for you right now, but I know he’s gone as sure as I know I had coffee this morning.” I glanced at her. “It’s at least twenty past now, right?”
She checked her watch. “Yeah, twenty-two.”
“Call the station, call the university, call him. I’ll tell you what you’ll find. He hasn’t showed and his cell is either out of range or switched off.”
She waited a second, then pulled out her phone and called the station. She put it on speaker.
“Maria, this is Detective Dehan. Has Am Nielsen turned up yet?”
“No, no word from him yet.”
“Call me when he shows, will you?”
“You told me that five minutes ago, honey.”
She called Hays.
“Dr. Hays, this is Detective Dehan…”
“Your partner spoke to me five minutes ago and ordered me to telephone him as soon as Nielsen arrived. He has not arrived. As soon as he does, I will call you. Is there anything else the police state would like from me before I start my day’s work?”
“No, thank you.”
/> She called Am and got no response.
Under the overpass, I turned onto Hunts Point Avenue and accelerated toward his house. I pulled up outside just as Dehan’s cell started to ring. She climbed out and slammed the door as she answered it.
“Yeah, Dehan.” She listened, watching me as I went to the door, hammered and rang the bell. “OK,” she said. “Just stand by. Wait there for now.”
The drapes were closed and there was no sound from inside. Suddenly Dehan shrugged. “It’s simple, Stone.”
“What is?”
“He supplied the gun. It was staring us in the face. I think one of us actually said it right at the beginning, but we dismissed it.”
“Why would he?”
She put her hands on my chest. Puffs of condensation came from her mouth as she spoke. “Put it together. He told us he liked her. He’s a chameleon. We’ve seen he has the ability to adapt to whatever he thinks people expect from him. Hell, he played us! He had us eating soup with him, listening to his story and advising him to go back to college! He even got that arrogant bastard Robles to get him onto the research team. So he got himself inside Agnes’ head.”
“What for?”
“I can give you two reasons. One, to help him get close to Robles because Robles could advance his career. It was not Robles who took an interest in Nielsen, but Nielsen who took an interest in Robles. And two, because Agnes is in fact an attractive woman.”
I frowned. “Agnes Shine?”
“Have you seen a picture of her?”
“She’s pretty enough, but she’s nothing special, Dehan.”
Her expression became smug. “Except, look at the way people respond to her. Ali looks like a million bucks, but how do people respond to her? With indifference. Agnes on the other hand, quiet, shy, retiring Agnes gets invited to the Meighs’ every weekend, becomes Robles’ special friend, Hays’ special friend, has Patricia Meigh hiding her and has Nielsen paying her special attention. I’m telling you, partner, Agnes Shine has a special attraction because of her shy, vulnerable nature. And Am Nielsen liked her, and with his empathic nature, got inside her defenses and when she decided she’d had enough of Robles she went to him—not Dr. Meigh or her husband!—to Am Nielsen because she knew he could get her a gun. And that, my friend, resolves the mystery of the Sig Sauer Tacops p226, unregistered and hot off the station wagon from Colorado.”
I thought about it for a moment. “You’re on fire today, Dehan. So wherever he is now…”
“She might be there too!” She pulled her cell and walked toward the car dialing. I called the inspector.
“John, good morning!”
I put him up to speed as far as Am was concerned and said, “I need to get into his house. There is a chance that Agnes is in there, or that there is some indication of where she might be.”
“Yes, I agree. I’ll send a Crime Scene team over, too. Let’s see if there is any trace of her there.”
“Good, thank you, sir.”
I hung up and by applying the small screwdriver on my Swiss Army knife, opened the lock before Dehan got back.
“We got probable cause?”
“The chief thinks so. We have a Crime Scene team coming over to look for traces of Agnes. You got gloves?”
“Always, baby.”
I glanced at her. Her tone of voice was incongruent with her Wool Elf look. She grinned. “I got the techs searching for his GPS. As soon as they find him, they’ll let us know.”
The kitchen showed us nothing but a pot of soup, one bowl and one spoon washed and dried on the rack. There was also a coffee percolator on the stove. I opened it and checked the grains. They were dry. The cups were all dry too, and stored away.
“He didn’t make coffee this morning.”
“That’s bad.”
“The last meal he had was soup.”
She smelled it. “It’s not rancid, but in this cold, that doesn’t mean much. It could be last night’s or the night before.” She put the pot down and faced me. “We spoke to him yesterday evening. We spooked him. He didn’t want to make a statement. He was anxious to get away. He bolted as soon as we left.”
I nodded. “Let’s have a look in the bedroom. See if he’s packed.”
The bed was unmade. His phone charger was plugged in next to the clock. I touched Dehan’s arm and pointed to it. She opened the wardrobe. There were a couple of jackets, a suit, a tie, some shirts, some chinos, shoes and boots. Two sports bags lay on the bottom of the wardrobe.
I opened the drawers in the tallboy against the wall. His underwear, his socks, jeans, belts and sweaters were all there. In the bathroom, his toothbrush, hairbrush and razor were all there. Dehan said:
“He didn’t come home to pack. He was in a hurry.”
“I don’t see his computer. He must have had it with him. But he’s left everything else.” I sighed and leaned my back against the wall. “What did we talk about? What did we say that could have spooked him so much?”
She thought for a minute. Outside the window, I could hear the cold sound of water spattering on the sidewalk from the guttering above. Dehan stuffed her hat in her pocket.
“He talked about how he was a clown, how they’d all heard Dr. Shine was a suspect in Robles’ murder. He knew Robles treated her like crap. He didn’t like that. He said she was really sweet—he used those words—and there was no way she shot him. He said he was sure Robles’ death had something to do with the research they were doing, but he had no concrete evidence, it was just a hunch. So he knew if he called us and said he was Robles’ student and believed Agnes was innocent, with no hard facts, we wouldn’t listen to him…”
“But that’s what he said, what did we say? Something we said spooked him.”
“I’m trying to remember. He said he got caught up playing a part…we asked him how much of what he said was true, he said pretty much all of it, he was from Colorado, his name, his dad…”
“You asked him if Robles had intervened on his behalf. That was when he told us it was not to get into the university, but onto the research program, remember? We asked if he had a good relationship with Robles…”
She pointed at me. “He said it was very good and confirmed they had plans for the Robles-Americano...”
“…And that was when I told him that there was research missing from what Meigh had shown us. That was when he started to get anxious, when I asked him to confirm, in a statement, that Robles’ research was radical and revolutionary.”
She nodded. “That, and when you asked him where Robles went on Saturday nights.”
I shook my head. “I can’t see it, Dehan. I can’t see anything there that would spook him enough to make him run.”
She nodded. “I can.”
“Tell me.”
“If Agnes has got Dr. Meigh and Am Nielsen to help her—Dr Meigh to hide her and Am to provide her with a weapon—it is possible, even probable, that Meigh doesn’t know anything about Am or how he got her the gun, but it is almost certain that Am knew that Meigh was hiding her.”
“Possible.”
“So when he hears that Meigh has started messing with the research, and we know about it, he figures we are going to start investigating her and it’s now only a matter of time before we find that she is hiding Agnes. You still with me? He’s a chess player, remember? He’s thinking several moves ahead. He knows that in a few moves we will have Agnes, she will confess and tell us where she got the gun from. So he bolts.”
I stared at her. “So Am gives Agnes the gun, Meigh doesn’t know that. When Robles dies, she hides his crucial research so she can present it as her own, we get wise to that and he fears our investigation into Meigh will show he was an accomplice in Robles’ murder…”
Before she could answer, her phone rang. She pulled it from her pocket and put it on speaker. “Yeah, Dehan.”
“Detective, we have just picked up a very weak signal from Mr. Nielsen’s phone.”
“Where?”
> “I think he must be on a barge, Detective, because the signal keeps fading and coming back, like it’s being shielded by lead or something. He’s on the river.”
“Which river?”
“North stretch of the Harlem, where it branches off the Hudson? Right by the Columbia University athletic complex. I’m sending you the coordinates to your phone. There’s a jetty there in the park, and he seems to be moored there.”
Her phone pinged and she said, “OK, got it.”
Outside, I could hear the crime scene team arriving. I sighed and reached for my phone. “We’d better call for back up. I think we could have trouble.”
TWELVE
By the time we got to West 218th, the signal from Am’s GPS had grown a little stronger. Access to the Inwood Hill Park, where the pier was located, was cut off by two bollards and six artistically placed rocks. We stopped there and two patrol cars pulled in behind us. Dehan climbed out and pointed up the road, shouting to the nearest car.
“Campbell, you and O’Connor take the other corner! GPS says he’s still on the boat, cover the paths in case he tries to run!” The car took off up the road. “Mendez! Wagner, with me!”
With that, Dehan and I took off at a run through the park, with Mendez and Wagner close behind. It was three hundred yards and the air was cold and rasped in my throat and lungs.
The pier was located in a small bay that cut into a spit of land that protruded into the northernmost stretch of the Harlem river. At low tide, the bay was simply a stretch of mud some two hundred yards across, with a small wooden pier, half concealed by trees, poking out from the parkland near the baseball pitch. When we got there and rounded the tree cover, Dehan stopped dead, and Mendez and Wagner stopped behind her. We were all panting big billows of frosted air. There was no water in the bay, only mud. And there was no boat, no barge sitting on the sludge, waiting for the high tide.
Dehan shook her head. “There’s nothing there.”