Commissioner Bennet followed up her warning with one more statement. “I’m officially informing you that formal charges are being brought against you. Your union rep should be called. I’ll try to have the arbitrator schedule a hearing as soon as possible. And for what it’s worth,” she added, “I’m sorry I have to do this. But I can’t have detectives running around half-cocked along with retired police officers conducting their own investigations.”
“Understood,” Lauren told her. “And thank you, Commissioner.”
“Thank you,” Reese echoed, the proper amount of humility in his voice.
Bennett nodded in a way that clearly expressed they were dismissed.
As they were walking out, Lauren took note of how Captain Maniechwicz had said nothing the entire time they were in the office.
For once, his silence didn’t reassure her.
47
Lauren could see Charlie through the open door to his interview room. Splayed out in his chair, legs apart, arms dangling, he wore a bored look on his face as the investigator from the state attorney general’s office questioned him. While it was standard procedure for the AG’s office to investigate official police corruption, it was a pain in the ass to have to be interviewed over and over again. After she’d finished her third cup of coffee, Lauren was ready to put on her gym shoes and take a lap around the office before her heart exploded.
The investigator from the attorney general’s office had her in the main Homicide office waiting to go over, for the second time that day, the events of Saturday night.
Another video had surfaced of the confrontation in the kitchen. A bus boy had whipped out his cell phone right when Vince and Reese had started tussling. He managed to capture Vince’s admission that Lauren’s stabbing had been an “accident,” but with video as well as audio. Vince’s hair drag of Lauren and his subsequent forking were also caught, and according to Marilyn, had already gone viral with over a hundred thousand hits, all before they’d managed to track down the owner of the phone. When Lauren reached back and plunged the fork into Vince’s face, the camera jiggled a little as the kid recording yelled, “Oh, damn!” Now she had to break down for the state investigator exactly what was going on, second by second, even though in her mind the video was clear and self-explanatory.
She knew they had Reese in the interview room in the Cold Case office doing the same thing. And he was probably just as happy to be there as she was.
“Here, darling,” Marilyn slid a paper plate with three chocolate chip cookies in front of her. “You gotta eat something before you keel over.”
“Thanks, Marilyn. You’re an angel, you know that?”
Marilyn shrugged her shoulders as she made her way back to her ringing phone. “Someone has to take care of you.” She paused as she studied the blinking lines, decided on one, and picked up. “Homicide.”
There was a long pause while Marilyn listened to the caller’s introduction, then parroted her response into the receiver. “All requests from the press are being referred to our media liaison. Please hold while I transfer you.” She gave Lauren a wink and pressed a few buttons only to pick another line and start again.
Lauren smiled to herself as she dunked Marilyn’s cookie into her coffee. She really was a lifesaver. Biting down, careful of her tongue, Lauren’s eyes picked up on familiar faces as they carried on their work.
Across the room the Homicide squad’s big screen TV was muted, playing a live stream from one of the cable news channels. A picture of the three Schultz brothers appeared on the television with the tagline beneath: Corrupt Cops Take Brotherly Love Too Far?
While she waited for her interrogator to return from the men’s room, Lauren made a mental list of the three brothers involved:
Sam—ex-cop who committed murder while on the job.
Ricky—retired Homicide detective who covered for his murdering brother while he was working.
Vince—working cop who attempted to continue the cover-up perpetrated by his youngest brother by stealing police property, stabbing a fellow officer, assaulting two fellow officers at a party, then trying to kill them and a retired officer by both ramming them with a stolen taxi and shooting at them.
It was cut and dried when you broke it down, really.
How did I ever manage to get myself involved in all this? She let her head sink into her hand as she leaned up against the wall next to her chair. Oh yeah, I showed up for work. Big mistake. I should retire and work in the graveyard with Charlie.
Lauren wondered how Ben Lema’s interview with Sam was going. It had been at least four hours and they were still at it, as far as Lauren knew. Lenny the cleaner was going around the office dumping out the trash cans again. Lauren waved to get his attention, then signed one of the words Lenny had taught her: Hello. He waved and signed hello back before returning to his duties.
It seemed like only five minutes had passed since Reese woke her up, but it was already after six in the evening. It was dark out; the short winter days replacing the lingering autumn ones. It was that season when you went to bed in the dark and got up in the dark, totally throwing off your sense of time. Outside, it was still snowing. Lauren had watched a plow come by a few minutes before, scraping the snow up onto the curb in front of headquarters in huge piles. Lauren speculated what winter would be like in the new headquarters building. Plowed parking spots and sidewalks? Warmth in the winter? Would the new, modern heating system work without all the ghostly metal banging these ancient radiators made to signal the heat was on?
Lauren looked at the time on her phone. Joy had left an hour before to serve the search warrant at Ricky’s house. It had taken Joy longer to write up the warrant than anticipated. She’d had a hard time with the address because Ricky had moved twice in the last year, and the utilities for his apartment were in his son’s name. Joy finally tracked him down, driving by the suspected apartment and seeing a red car in the driveway with a Buffalo Police sticker on the windshield. She’d run the plate, and it had come back to Richard Schultz, so she snapped some photos of the outside of the house with her cell phone to attach to the application for the warrant.
Armed with the warrant, Joy took two patrol cars with her and told Lauren before she left that she’d text her if they found anything interesting. Coincidently, the picture on the flat-screen TV in front of Lauren flipped to a photo of a young Ricky Schultz in his police uniform. The banner underneath now read: No Charges for Ex-Cop? Community Outrage Grows.
Lovely, Lauren thought as she stared at his piggish face and slicked back hair, it’s a slideshow of scumbags.
Her investigator from the attorney general’s office, Wayne Kencil, came back, buttoning his suit coat all the way up. He was a retired detective from Rochester Police department, very doughy looking, like maybe there’d been a time he’d been into body building but decided he liked chicken wings more. He had close-set, gray eyes that made Lauren want to avoid eye contact with him. That probably hinders his interview abilities, she thought. Having those wolf eyes.
“I just got a text,” Kencil told her, taking his seat across from her. “Sam’s been placed under arrest for the murder of Gabriel Mohamed.”
I wonder if he took the call while he was sitting on the can? She vowed not to touch his phone for any reason.
“I want to go over this just one more time.” He grabbed the iPad he had left face-down on the desk. Turning it around so she could see, the screen showed the new video, stopped right at the moment Lauren had stuck the fork in Vince’s face.
She picked up her second cookie, making sure not to offer Kencil the last one. Who knew when she’d get another snack? She wondered if Marilyn had a secret stash of them in her desk. Probably, Lauren thought, giving her cookie a healthy dunk in her coffee. That’s how she rolls.
Lauren brushed crumbs from her mouth with the back of her hand while she chewed. No use huntin
g for a napkin; any sense of propriety she had possessed had gone out the window on Saturday night. She answered while still chewing. “What do you want to know?”
Before he could answer, Lauren’s city-issue phone buzzed in her pocket. Only work people knew the number and not many of them. She slipped it out and looked at her screen. It was a message from Joy.
I got nothing over here so far. We’re taking Ricky’s phone, but no Murder Book, no tire iron, nothing with the name Gabriel Mohamed on it.
Lauren texted back right away: Hopefully there’s something our computer forensics people can dig out of his phone.
Three little dots let her know that Joy was composing a reply. Then: I wouldn’t count on it. He seemed very smug when we showed up. Now he’s standing here staring at me with a shit-eating grin on his face.
Lauren gripped her phone hard while she pictured Ricky with that black stain marring his cheek, smirking at Joy as she searched. Keep looking.
Will do.
Bastard. Lauren wanted to throw her cell phone across the room. Cocky, smug bastard. She looked over at Charlie, who was punctuating something he was saying by driving his index finger into the desk. The investigator from the attorney general’s office jumped back a little, not sure what to make of a sixty-eight-year-old grave digger with access to a gun, whose work uniform now consisted of a pair of stained denim overalls.
“I just want to go over this video one more time. And the footage from the hotel cameras in the lobby and the main doors. They show a lot, but I need you to put it into context for me.”
Lauren put the rest of the cookie down on the desk. She’d lost her appetite. She could only pray the guys down in the lab would find something, anything, on Ricky’s cell phone linking him to Gabriel or Joe’s death. What is the context? she thought bitterly. That me and Reese will do whatever it takes to make a case? Because right now, as far as Ricky Schultz is concerned, that’s the only thing the video proves.
48
Lauren wrapped her green-and-white checkered scarf around her head and face like a mummy as she and Reese approached the side door of police headquarters the next day. Despite closing off road traffic except for emergency vehicles on Franklin Street all the way from Pearl to Church Street, the media lined the sidewalk from end to end. Across Church Street, media vans took up every available parking spot (and even some that weren’t), including blocking the sidewalks.
Lincoln Lewis had brought Ricky Schultz in for questioning. Reese had been finishing packing up his baseball cap collection when they got the texts from Marilyn to get their asses down there.
They’d been at headquarters well into the evening, and sleeping in late that day had been an absolute luxury. Lauren had watched Reese load a box, then his big duffel bag into his car while she sipped her coffee. Watson followed him back and forth to the car, tracking snow across the hardwood floor and spraying her with droplets when he decided to give himself a good shake.
Reese had been living in the house he inherited over by Cazenovia Park before her attack, but it was tiny. Lauren had to fight back the offer of just letting them stay with her because she knew that was the empty nest in her heart talking. Still, it was painful to watch him pack up his and Watson’s stuff. Then they got the text messages.
Reese got ready to swipe in the side door, mindful not to kick over any of the plastic soda bottles sticking out of the snow that people used as ash trays on their smoke breaks. One of the report technicians from the Narcotics squad stood shivering just inside the doorway, cigarette posed between her fingers, taking a long drag. She looked up at them, exhaled a cloud of blue smoke and said, “This is nuts. Can’t even get down the damn street.”
Reese pulled his card through the reader. “Careful. Those cameras can pick up every word you say.”
“Yeah? Well, screw them.” The chubby middle-aged redhead chuckled loudly. “I got some words for them, all right.”
Riley and Reese walked past her into the building, which seemed strangely empty until Lauren remembered all the administrative report technicians had already been moved to the new building, leaving this end of the first floor a ghost town. They took the elevator to the third floor in silence, not trusting that any reporters hadn’t somehow found their way into headquarters.
Lauren unwound the scarf, letting it hang around her neck. “They already know what you look like,” Reese commented as they stepped off the elevator. “I don’t know why you even bothered.”
“Maybe I should let them film me. It’s better than that stupid departmental picture they keep showing.” The department took a photo of every officer and detective in their class A uniform every couple of years. Andy, the police photographer, told her it was so if she ever got in trouble, the brass would be able to put her in a photo array with other cops. Of course, that was also the picture the department released to the press.
They could hear the chaos before they even opened the Homicide wing’s door. Every detective working was stuffed in the hallway, talking, drinking coffee, nosing around for the scoop. Every head swiveled to Reese and Riley when they walked in, then the crowd went silent, staring.
For exactly one and a half seconds. Then they went back to rumor mongering, speculating, and gossiping.
“This is great. Downstairs it’s a circus, upstairs it’s a sideshow.” Reese pushed past Vatasha Anthony and Reggie Major, who were standing by the breakroom door, both with coffee mugs in their hands. Vatasha gave Lauren the stink eye as she passed. Almost getting murdered had not warmed their frosty relationship one bit.
“They got him in the big room,” Reggie called after them. “Joy’s in there with Ricky and his lawyer.”
Lauren half turned, “Thanks, Reggie.”
The primary interrogation room was straight back through the main office. Another smaller, narrow room was to its immediate left. There you could watch through the two-way mirror and listen through the intercom system that had been installed in the eighties and had never been updated. The state-of-the-art camera inside the room fed into the media center, where you could watch and listen on monitors. The sound was crystal clear and the picture perfect, but it wasn’t the same as standing three feet from the suspect, watching every twitch, hearing every stutter—close enough that if the glass should shatter, you could reach out and touch them.
Lauren could see the red light over the interrogation room door was lit, indicating an interview was happening. The door was shut, the frosted glass had a piece of paper taped to it that read QUIET. INTERVIEW IN PROGRESS.
The door to the room next to it was ajar. It had to be kept dark, so you couldn’t see through the two-way glass. It was like stepping into the world’s smallest movie theater. Standing-room capacity: three. Lauren pushed open the door, slipping inside. Reese followed, shutting it behind him.
Lincoln Lewis was standing in front of the mirror, arms folded across his chest, staring into the glass. He stepped sideways to make room when Riley and Reese came in, but he didn’t look away from his client. Lauren found herself sandwiched between Lewis and Reese in the claustrophobic closet. Lewis was wearing one of his simple, expensive suits, complete with his signature red bow tie. Lauren could smell just a hint of cologne on him, mixed with soap, like he had showered right before he had come to headquarters. Lewis had a pair of silver-rimmed glasses resting on his nose that Lauren hadn’t seen him wear before, his eyebrows pulled down to the frame as he watched Ricky.
Ricky Schultz was sitting with Joy Walsh, directly in front of them. Wearing the same ill-fitting suit he had on Saturday night, Ricky’s cheeks were blotchy, with more angry red patches splashed across them. The mole that Lauren thought he should have checked seemed inked into the side of his face, dark and jagged. It was hard not to stare at it when you looked at him.
Lauren broke the silence by whispering, “Shouldn’t you be in there with your client?” You had to keep
it down in the narrow space or your voice would bleed over to the interview room.
Lewis shook his head. “He said no. Richard Schultz denies any knowledge of his brother’s involvement with the shooting of Gabriel Mohamed, and he certainly didn’t know anything about Vince’s attack on you.”
Lauren took in Ricky’s body language: annoyed, cocky, and angry. He’d been in Joy’s seat too many times to say the wrong thing. Of course he’d give a statement denying any knowledge. As long as his brothers kept their traps shut, he’d be just fine.
“You really think that’s true?” Lauren asked Lewis.
Now he did look at her. “They found nothing during the search of his apartment. Nothing on his phone and nothing in his personal effects. I have to give it to you, Lauren—you’re tenacious as hell. What I can’t believe is that you caught the guy who stabbed you, they’ve arrested the man who killed Gabriel Mohamed, and you’re still not satisfied. You have an almost obsessive need to entirely destroy the Schultz family.”
“I don’t want to destroy anyone. I just want all the guilty people in jail where they belong.”
“How noble of you,” he mused softly, turning his attention back to Ricky. “But as plausible as it is to believe the three brothers loved each other so much they’d cover up a murder and kill to keep a secret, it’s equally plausible that Vince and Sam hid their crimes from their big brother to protect him as well.”
Reese made a snorting sound. Lauren gave him an elbow.
The three were standing so close in the darkness that their shoulders touched. Lewis was so tall he had to hunch forward slightly so that his head didn’t hit the ancient audio equipment that hung from the ceiling. He wasn’t wearing a top coat; he must have draped it over a chair in the office or hung it on the coat tree someone had pulled out of the garbage somewhere and stuck in the corner by the door. Lewis looked like he was watching his nephew’s communion video, not the interrogation of a former police officer.
The Murder Book Page 24