by Blake Banner
She raised her hands and rubbed her face with her palms. “Why… how…would Lenny have access to one of those lots, warehouses or factories?”
“The same question applies to Chad. Which is why we need to work systematically through those premises.” I thumped the top of the car with my index finger. “That question, pretty much the first question we asked, Dehan, is key to this investigation.” I paused, watching a pink and orange haze touch the horizon behind her. “I know Lenny has put himself in the frame, and I’m not saying he didn’t do it, he may well have. But there is more to it than that.”
She made a doubtful face. “An accomplice?”
I shrugged. “Let’s go find out.”
We spent the morning compiling a list of all the companies that had premises on the banks of the Bronx between Starlight Park and the northernmost point of Soundview park on the river. By nine AM, Dehan had drawn a detailed map showing each one of them, its location, trade and telephone number. She got hold of a whiteboard and pinned the map to it, and we started working systematically through them all. It was a mile long stretch on the east side of the river, and almost a mile and a quarter on the west bank, a total of eighty five outfits, from small one-man shows, partnerships and limited companies, to corporations and state owned enterprises, like parks. Many of the addresses on the Bronx River Avenue above Colgate were private homes that backed onto the railway lines before the river, adding two more layers of complication to the puzzle: did he know somebody with a house up there who helped him dispose of the body? And if so, how did they get the body over the tracks and through the fences before dumping it in the river?
At nine, Dehan went down to the deli on the corner to get more croissants and coffee, a practice which never failed to raise hoots of derision from fellow detectives stuffing their faces with the more traditional donuts. While she was gone, I started calling.
It was slow, tedious work that yielded very few results. Mostly you got a vaguely amused voice saying something along the lines of, “A poisonnel rawstah? 2016? Sure, listen, I’ll tell yah what I’m gonna do for yah, pal. Soon as Frank gets in, I’m gonna tell him to prioritize dat for yah and send it right over, FedEx.” And you hung up knowing full damn well that nobody called Frank worked there.
Other times you got a more efficient sounding secretary, but she’d tell you pretty much the same thing: They’d have to dig out the records, scan them and email them over. They’d do that just as soon as they could.
Dehan returned. Mo hitched his pants over his belly and wheezed a laugh in what he thought was a French accent. “Oooh, ear she come, wiz zee qua-sonts and zee ca-fay!”
She put down the coffee and dropped the croissants, squinting at him like she was trying to see him through a dense mist. “What the hell is wrong with you, Mo? You sound like you have my neighbor’s dachshund stuck up your ass. Didn’t your mommy tell you to stop playing that game with small dogs?”
There were general snorts and sniggers around the room. Mo gaped. She ignored them all and sat. “How’s it going?”
“Dreadful would be accurate, if restrained.”
We kept going for another two and a half hours, securing lots of promises to send us over the list of employees for November, 2016, as soon as they possibly could.
At ten minutes before noon, Bob called.
“Hey, John, listen, I finished the tests, and I’m afraid I have some bad news for you.”
“Whatever it was, it wasn’t going to be good news, Bob. Go ahead.”
“Right. Look, the sheets showed positive for semen as well as other fluids. The semen was from just a single donor… It’s Lenny’s DNA, John. He had sex with the girl in her bed, in her house.”
I was quiet for a moment, then I said, “I understand, Bob. Thanks.”
“Frank will contact you later about the other thing. I’ll send over my report with his.”
“Yeah, that’s great. Thanks.”
I hung up. Dehan was watching me. I said, “Let’s go talk to the inspector.”
ELEVEN
The rain had started again in earnest. Outside the inspector’s window, the world was a gray, misty place, and from the lintel, cold, silver pearls of water gathered and dripped onto the sill bellow. An occasional wind shook them from time to time and dispersed them, dragging the rain back and forth in the background, among the black shades of naked trees.
Dehan sat on the black vinyl, imitation leather sofa beneath that window, and I sat in the chair opposite him at his desk. Deputy Inspector John Newman looked at me unhappily and said: “What, precisely have we got, and what do we know for a fact?”
I looked at Dehan. Her gaze shifted to the ceiling and she began to recite:
“We know, as of ten minutes ago, that Detective Leonard Davis had sexual intercourse with Celeste Reynolds at some time not too long prior to her death.” She looked at the inspector and spread her hands. “The sheets on her bed were not pristine, but they were not dirty, either. We know that he had been conducting a sexual affair with her for about six months prior to her death. We know that he registered a special email address to communicate with her, and that address contained the name ‘rod’.” She closed her eyes a moment. “Rod underscore wheeler at yadda yadda dot com. We know that after exchanging only a few messages, he told her it was too risky and asked her to delete their messages. He told her that he was going to buy a burner, so that they could communicate by Whatsapp. All of that we know as hard fact.”
I gave him a moment to assimilate that and what it meant, then said, “We also know that when Detective Davis took on the investigation of Celeste’s death, he concealed evidence and that he did not employ due diligence in acquiring evidence. He requested six months of phone records from Verizon, her service provider—the six months during which he was having an affair with Celeste, removed them from the case file and held them at home. We know also that though he was contacted by witnesses on the corner of Rosedale Avenue and Gleason, who saw Celeste in an altercation with a man who had arrived in a white truck, he did not include their testimony in the file. We also know that he did not interview Celeste’s boyfriend, nor did he have a team conduct a thorough search of her room, though that would have been a logical step to take. In short, he deliberately allowed the case to go cold.”
The chief had been nodding while I was talking, making an occasional note. Now he said, “What about his relationship with Reynolds?”
Dehan answered. “He tends to play it down. They knew each other as kids, attended the same Catholic church, right opposite Reynolds’ house, but besides that, he says they are just acquaintances. To hear Reynolds tell it, they were a lot closer, and he was often at their house. That’s borne out, sir, by the exchange of emails, where she refers to a visit from him.”
He thought for a long time, staring at the floor over by Dehan’s feet. Eventually, he took a deep breath and said, “None of this actually points to him as a murderer. There is strong circumstantial and forensic evidence that he was trying to conceal an affair. There is a strong possibility that that affair provided the motive for murder. But any decent defense attorney is going to have a field day destroying the case as it stands, and quite rightly so. This boy Chad has just as much motive, and from what you’ve told me, he is a young man with a very violent temper. There actually is, in point of fact, a reasonable doubt as to both of their guilt. You need to bring me something that nails either Lenny or Chad to the murder.”
I said, “We may have that later today, sir. When Celeste’s body was taken into the morgue, Frank managed to get a partial thumbprint from her throat. I have asked him to run a comparison with Lenny’s thumbprint. We don’t know at this stage how useful it will be.”
He was thoughtful for a while again, then said, “It may be enough to make him confess. Bring him in. Let him believe the thumbprint is better than it actually is. See if he breaks. Either way, he’s finished as a cop. Go find him. What a disgrace, to himself, his family and the
department. If you have to charge him, charge him with concealing evidence and the obstruction of justice for now.”
We went down the stairs. Dehan went into the detectives’ room and I went to the front desk. Maria, the desk sergeant, was there.
“What do you want, handsome? That Carmen not treating you right?”
“Yeah, I need some sweet consolation from you, Maria. Oh, no, wait, it was something else. Yeah, you seen Lenny Davis?”
She frowned. “No, I saw him yesterday. He was goin’ out when you was comin’ in. But I ain’t seen him today.”
“Call me on my phone if he comes in, will you?”
“Can I call you on your phone if he doesn’t?”
“No.”
I met Dehan coming out of the detectives’ room. “Nobody’s seen him since yesterday. I asked Pete, his partner. He said he hasn’t seen him since yesterday. He’s called him a few times, but his phone is switched off. He said he wasn’t feeling so good last night. I didn’t want to push.”
I nodded. “Let’s go to his house.”
We pulled our coats over our heads and ran through the downpour to the Jag. We clambered in and slammed the doors. I backed out, then headed at a snail’s pace, with my lights on, down Storey Avenue to Soundview, where I turned right.
Lenny’s house was in Castle Hill, on the Avenue. It should have been a five minute drive, but it took all of fifteen with the heavy traffic and the rain, and we finally pulled up outside his house at one PM. His white Jeep was in the driveway, alongside a gray Toyota. I parked across the drive, so he couldn’t leave, and then we climbed out and made a run for the front door.
His was one of a row of ugly, red brick monoliths set in concrete front and back yards behind a white steel railing. The windows didn’t invite you in so much as scowl at you from forbidding walls. Dehan leaned on the bell and after a moment, the door was yanked open by a woman in her early forties with blonde hair, a tragic mouth and weeping eyes that first showed hope, and then despair.
“Oh, my God!” she said. “Are you from the precinct? Are you here about Lenny?”
Dehan said, “Can we come in? It’s raining…” and squeezed past the woman. She stood back and I pushed in too.
She was staring up into my face with her hands half reaching for my lapels. I said, “Are you Lenny’s wife? What’s happened?”
She shook her head in rapid jerks. “I don’t know! I thought you knew! I don’t know what’s happened to him.” Now she grabbed my lapel and pulled herself toward me, staring up into my face with half crazy eyes and smudged mascara. “His car is here! His phone is switched off. Pete called me asking where he was. I came home. There’s nothing, just the note.”
“What note, Mrs. Davis?”
“On his computer.”
“Show me the note, and tell us, step by step, everything that happened since last night.”
Her whole body was trembling. “You don’t know then? You don’t know where he is?”
I shook my head and spoke quietly. “No, but we are going to find him. Where is the note? Show it to me.”
Dehan stepped up, put her arms around her and the woman collapsed against Dehan’s shoulder, sobbing convulsively.
We were in a small, carpeted hallway with white skirting boards and white walls. A door gave on to a small living room that was unremarkable. I leaned in and looked around for a PC, but didn’t find one.
A narrow staircase with white banisters climbed to an upper floor, and beyond Dehan and Mrs. Davis, I could see a door to a kitchen with mock parquet flooring. I squeezed past them and went to the kitchen. The door to the backyard was open and the rain was making a loud, thundering roar on the concrete, spattering water onto the floor. I closed the door and looked around: a large fridge covered in notes and magnets, a calendar, an open dishwasher beside a washing machine, a draining rack with a cup, a small plate, a large plate and a butter knife, a steak knife and a fork. A pine table occupied the center of the floor, with four matching pine chairs. On it there was a laptop, closed. On top of the laptop there was a note.
I sat, pulled on my latex gloves and picked up the note.
Baby, I am so sorry, I don’t know where to start.
I have done something very, very stupid, and I have caused so many problems for you and for the kids, just through my own selfishness and vanity. If I could go back into the past and change what I have done I would. If there were anything on Earth I could do to change my mistakes, please believe me baby, I would. The last thing I ever wanted in this life was to cause harm or unhappiness to you and our beautiful girls.
I can’t explain to you what has happened, or what I have done. There just isn’t time. I have to go away. Please believe me, I would not do this if I did not have to. But I have no choice. It has to be this way.
Kiss the girls for me one last time, because I will probably never see any of you again. I love you hunny. Please believe that I always have and I always will.
Lenny
I bagged it and returned to the hall. Dehan and Mrs. Davis had moved into the living room and were sitting on a white leather sofa. I sat in a matching chair with my back to the window. The double-glazing blocked out the sound of the rain, but somewhere I could hear the splatter of water falling from guttering onto concrete.
She had stopped convulsing, and her breathing, though shaky, had come under control. Dehan was stroking her back.
I said: “Mrs. Davis, have you any idea what this note is about?”
She was shaking her head before I had finished the question. “I thought you would know, when you turned up…”
“How was Lenny when he got home last night?”
She frowned and blinked a lot. “He was kind of, hyper.” She turned to face Dehan as though she might understand what she meant. “A bit too boisterous, a bit too noisy, joking a bit too much.”
“Was that unusual?”
Her face said she wasn’t sure. “He got like that sometimes, especially in the last two or three years. It depended on the case he was on. If it was difficult, or involved long hours or surveillance, sometimes he would come home a bit hyper like that. But last night was a bit over the top.”
“Did anything happen?”
“No, not then. Nothing special. We had dinner, we watched some TV. Then, about eleven thirty me and the girls went up. He said he had to do a little work on the computer and he’d be right up.”
She stopped. Her bottom lip curled in and she started to cry again, speaking in a strange, twisted voice. “But, I came down to get a glass of water. He didn’t hear me, and I saw, on the screen, he was booking a plane ticket! A ticket to Mexico! Where is he going? Why is he doing this? What’s happening?”
“Did you get any of the details of the flight, Mrs. Davis?”
“I think it said the flight was Delta, at fifteen twenty. That’s three twenty, right?”
I stood and walked into the hall, dialing the inspector.
“John! What’s happening?”
I spoke quietly, walking down to the kitchen. “He’s gone AWOL. He’s booked on a Delta flight to Mexico at three twenty. You need to alert the airports. Find out which airports have flights to Mexico at three twenty. Let me know and we’ll head out to intercept him.”
“OK, stand by.”
I went back to the living room. Mrs. Davis was talking to Dehan.
“He said it was part of an undercover operation, something to do with a drugs bust, a joint operation between vice and homicide. He said the ticket wasn’t for him. It seemed very odd to me, but you know, he never really wanted me to get involved with his work. He always said that home was his haven from all that. That’s why…” She stared up at me. “It seemed so odd that he would be doing that at home. He never brought his work home.”
“Has he packed any clothes?”
She nodded silently. “And his passport is gone. I haven’t checked our account yet. What has he done?”
I sighed and said truthfully, �
�We don’t know yet, Mrs. Davis. That’s what we are trying to find out.”
She turned to Dehan. “He got up with me this morning, which he has never done. He’s always up very early. And he kissed me very tenderly when he saw me off at the door. I felt then it was like he was saying goodbye. Is he going to come back?”
Dehan squeezed her hand. “Let’s just take it one step at a time. We are as surprised as you are, Mrs. Davis.”
My phone rang. It was the inspector. “John, it’s John here. We have a Delta flight out of JFK, at three twenty exactly. I have alerted security, though it’s a bit late. If you get moving, you should have time to get there before it takes off.”
I glanced out the window at the rain. I said, “Yeah, OK. We’re on our way.” I turned to face her. “Mrs. Davis, we are going to try to catch up with your husband before he boards the plane. We will let you know as soon as we know something. Meantime, have you got anybody who can come and be with you?”
She nodded. “I’ll call my sister. Please bring him back to us.”
Dehan gave her a hug and said, “We’ll do our best. I promise.”
The rain had eased from a monsoon to a steady downpour. We clambered into the Jaguar and I fired her up. As we pulled out onto the road, I smiled. Dehan said, “You’re smiling. That is inappropriate right now.”
I glanced at her. “It always amuses me,” I said. “You are such a badass with such a bad attitude, but underneath, you’re just a big, soppy blancmange.”
She didn’t answer. She just stared out at the rain as we moved north and then south toward the Hutchinson River Bridge, but I thought I saw her smile.
TWELVE
The massive hall was packed with what looked like thousands of people. There was a hum of voices that echoed overhead almost like a cathedral. Behind me, the doors hissed open to the sound of the downpour, then closed, leaving only the smell and the shiver of the damp. Everywhere there were wet coats, closed, dripping umbrellas, plastic macs, red, blue, yellow and transparent, milling, swilling, jostling, pushing, pulling and carrying luggage of every shape and size.