Janine Nash gave McQuillan a ‘what’s going on’ look but continued to play along. It was a small Cape Cod house with no basement. They started upstairs and systematically went through dressers, closets and all the bathroom cabinets. Nothing. McQuillan poked around the kitchen, opening cabinet doors and then moved into the TV room/office.
The desk was littered with paper so that the detectives could barely see the wooden top. McQuillan pulled at the top right-hand drawer, but it wouldn’t open.
‘He keeps that drawer locked,’ said Melissa. ‘I always wondered why. I asked him once, and he told me it’s where he keeps all of his financial information and to mind my own business.’
McQuillan’s ears were itching and getting hot again.
‘Do you have a key to this desk?’ he asked nonchalantly while doing high kicks inside his head.
‘He never lets me near his desk.’
The detective was about to suggest they bust the lock open when Melissa Roberts had an idea.
‘Wait a minute, there’s a little glass bowl on the top of Alec’s wardrobe filled with coins. I looked in it once, and I remember now, there was a small key mixed in with the coins. I didn’t think anything of it, just figured it was one of the many random keys floating around that didn’t belong to anything.’
Melissa ran upstairs leaving Janine Nash and McQuillan alone. Nash looked at the detective skeptically.
‘What’s going on McQ?’ Nash whispered. ‘We’re way out of SVU territory right now. What have you got up your sleeve?’
‘It’s my only shot,’ McQuillan whispered. ‘Work with me, Janine. I ran the Quinn Roberts murder investigation for over five years. We’re okay, remember, she invited us in. No harm, no foul. If we find something, then we do. If we don’t, we don’t.’
Melissa came back into the room with a smile and a small key in her outstretched palm.
‘I fished through the coins. It looks like the right size for the lock on the desk drawer, don’t you think?’
She handed the key to McQuillan. He sat down at the desk and pushed the key into the lock. The key turned, and he slid the top drawer open. It was practically empty. He had hoped to find packets of stolen money, drugs or kiddie porn, anything that would be incriminating.
‘There’s nothing in here,’ he said disappointedly as he picked things out of the drawer. ‘Just a couple of notepads, a UR key ring, three pens, and some tape. You said he always keeps it locked, right? Why would someone religiously lock an empty desk?’ McQuillan said, his mind racing.
‘Let me have a look,’ Melissa said. The detective got up, and Melissa slid into the chair. She reached her thin arm to the very back of the top drawer to a section they couldn’t see. Then, she looked up at him and smiled.
‘I feel something,’ she said and pulled out a pack of Marlboro Lights and a big box of kitchen matches.
‘That’s why he locked it,’ she said. ‘He started smoking again and didn’t want me to find out. I hope he gets lung cancer.’
‘Is there anything else in the back of the drawer?’ McQuillan asked. Melissa fished around again.
‘No, that’s all.’
McQuillan had thought the desk was going to be a criminal treasure trove. He opened the pack of cigarettes. Three left. Then he picked up the box of kitchen matches. It felt heavy. The little voice in his head told him to open the box. He pushed the cardboard tray out. Instead of big wooden matches with red tips, the carton was filled with a couple dozen SD cards, like the ones you have in your camera or phone for storing videos or pictures. He wondered why Alec Roberts kept all these SD cards in a matchbox in a locked drawer.
‘Melissa, do you recognize these?’ McQuillan asked. ‘Do you know what they’re from?’
‘Alec is into photography,’ she said. ‘He’s pretty good, he even won an award at a local art show. He’s always taking pictures of nature and birds. That’s probably what’s on the cards.’
‘Why would someone hide pictures of birds in a matchbox in a locked drawer?’ said Detective Nash. ‘That doesn’t make sense.’
‘Do you have a computer I could use?’ McQuillan asked.
While Melissa went upstairs to her bedroom to get her laptop, McQuillan poked through the matchbox.
‘You think it’s something?’ Janine Nash asked after Melissa left the room.
‘My gut and my itchy ears don’t think it’s nothing. Why keep a desk locked when there’s nothing in it?’ he said.
Chapter 95
Melissa came back with her computer, placed it on the desk and McQuillan plugged in one of the SD cards.
The three of them watched Alec Roberts have sex with a variety of women captured from the same vantage point in his bedroom. McQuillan recognized a couple of the women. One was Alison Moore, Alec’s old girlfriend and the other was Cindy Kelleher, another one of Alec’s women. There were many videos of women, dozens of them, mainly young. Some were active participants, but many appeared to be unconscious or severely impaired. Most of them looked like they could be college students. Melissa Roberts stared at the videos, tears running down her face, but said nothing.
McQuillan plugged in card after card and the same tawdry yet familiar episode started again and again.
‘Most of them were filmed in my bedroom,’ said Melissa. ‘They have timestamps, and they’re from before I knew Alec. I can tell because all the bedding is different now. The videos of the other women had his old bedspread and pillows, the stuff he had before we got married. I bought all new sheets and a comforter after our wedding. I guess my husband is only a liar, rapist, peeping Tom, and pornographer but not a cheater. Lucky me.’
McQuillan inserted a new SD card. A video of Melissa Roberts in bed with Alec appeared on the screen. She sat next to the detective silently, covering her eyes, face bright red, periodically gasping.
‘Can you stop the video, please?’ she said, ‘I can’t watch it.’
McQuillan stopped it.
‘I didn’t know he filmed me. I’ll bet the other women didn’t either. If he videoed them without their consent, is that a crime?’
‘Oh yeah,’ McQuillan said. ‘If they didn’t know about it, it’s absolutely a crime.’
‘I want to find out how he did this,’ Melissa shouted as she bolted up the stairs with Nash and McQuillan right behind her. When they got to the bedroom, they fanned out to determine the exact angle from where the videos were taken. McQuillan walked around the bed until he thought he had found the spot.
‘It looks like they were recorded from somewhere on that chest of drawers,’ he said.
The detective reached up to the top of the chest. There was a bowl of coins and a digital clock.
He picked up the clock, shook it and pushed some buttons. A little door on the back of it opened. Inside was an SD card. It looked like all the others they had found in the matchbox.
‘That’s how he filmed everyone,’ said McQuillan. ‘Through this fake clock.’
‘He’s a pig,’ said Melissa. ‘I can’t believe I married him.’
The three of them went back to the first floor, and McQuillan put the new SD card into the computer. The video started to play. Timestamp: last night. They watched Alec Roberts knock Melissa down and get on top of her and put his hands around her neck and over her mouth. They could see how badly Melissa was trembling and heard her plead with Alec to stop. She fought but he overpowered her and then her whole body went limp when she realized there was no way out.
McQuillan looked over at Melissa crying in the corner. She wasn’t watching the video any longer.
‘I hate him,’ she said through her tears, ‘and I feel sad for the woman on that video crying on the bed. Me.’
McQuillan turned back to the video. Alec climbed off his wife and poured himself another glass of bourbon. When he reached over to get his drink, Melissa jumped up and then ran into the bathroom and locked the door behind her, just like she’d told them. Alec remained on the bed in a drunken stu
por, still shouting at the closed bathroom door.
‘You’re a bitch, Melissa, I don’t fucking need you. You think I give a rat’s ass about you,’ he shouted, ‘cause I don’t. You’re just a weight around my neck. When I say jump, you ask how high. I’m the king of this fucking castle. You got that?’
Alec was quiet for a moment and then almost as if he got a second wind, started again.
‘You better shape up, Melissa,’ he continued, slurring his words, ‘I got rid of wife number one, and I can take care of wife number two the same fucking way. I still got the goods on Malecki. That’s right, I’ll call my man, Victor.’
Alec laughed to himself so hard that he choked on his own saliva. Too bad he didn’t choke to death, McQuillan thought. He didn’t know what Alec Roberts was talking about, but he was going to find out. Who was Malecki? Was that a person? McQuillan understood the ‘wife number one’ part though, that was loud and clear. It was judgment day, thought McQuillan and Alec Roberts was going down.
‘You hear me, Melissa,’ Alec began again. ‘I’ll get Malecki to shut you down the same way he did with that other bitch. She thought she was so great. She was a pathological liar. She deliberately got pregnant. She thought I didn’t know. All it takes is one word from me, and you’re gone, Melissa. Forever. Just like that lazy, crazy whore. She was trying to bleed me dry. Wanted all my money. She got what she deserved. Wanted me to pay her for the rest of my life. It’s my fucking pension, not hers. She had no right to it. Never worked a day in her life and expected me to keep paying.’
Alec took another gulp of his bourbon, smiled and looked over at the closed bathroom door again.
‘You better get your act together,’ he shouted, ‘or I'm going to call my buddy and have him pay you a visit too.’ He took one last swig of his drink and a minute later, passed out.
McQuillan looked over at Melissa. She was curled up in a fetal position on the couch under a blanket. The detective dumped the remaining SD cards on the desk and played and fast-forwarded through each one. There were twenty-three, each loaded with numerous videos taken covertly in Alec Roberts’ bedroom.
One last SD card remained that looked different from the others. The rest were black, but this one was green. McQuillan pushed the card into the port of the laptop. This video was different, it wasn’t recorded in a bedroom. It was taken outside at night.
A light flashed on the right side of the screen. Something moved by fast. McQuillan couldn’t tell what it was. Two seconds later, a car pulled out onto a road and screeched to a stop. The car backed up and turned a little as its lights flooded the street in front of it. It looked like the car had hit something, there was a person on the ground. The headlights reflected off the shirt of a man lying on the pavement. The man was wearing night time running gear. The flash at the beginning of the video had been the runner’s headlamp and the reflectors on his clothes. The driver of the car got out and looked at the man on the ground. The video zoomed in close on his license plate as the driver got back in his car and drove away.
A few seconds later, the video went dark, and they could only hear the audio. They listened to the sound of a car door opening and then Alec Roberts’ voice saying, ‘Oh my God, he killed that guy.’ The video came back and flashed on the head of the fallen runner in the road. The man was bleeding, his eyes were open, and he was dead. They heard a car door slam and a car engine roar. The video went black again, and they couldn’t see anything, only the sound of Alec shouting like a cowboy. He was making whooping noises as he drove. That mental case was enjoying this, thought McQuillan.
‘You fucking bastard,’ they heard Alec scream. ‘You killed that guy. I’m going to get you and make a citizen’s arrest. You thought you were free and clear, woo-hoo, but Dr. Roberts saw the whole fucking thing.’
The video was dark, and McQuillan and Nash could only hear sounds. They figured the camera must have been on the seat or the floor of the car. After about fifteen minutes of Alec’s endless shouting and threats, the engine stopped, and everything went quiet.
Chapter 96
The two detectives and Melissa Roberts stared at a black screen. They heard something open and close, and then it sounded like Alec said, ‘Come on, my little friend, let’s go pay this asshole a visit.’
With only audio, McQuillan wondered who Alec Roberts was talking to. Was there another person in the car? A few moments later, the video came back on again and was slowly moving towards a house. As the shot got closer, they detected a man lying on the grass in the front yard of a ranch style house.
‘Get up,’ they heard Alec’s voice shout at the man.
‘Who the fuck are you?’ said the man on the ground, barely opening his eyes.
‘I’m the guy who’s gonna turn you over to the cops. It’s called a citizen’s arrest,’ Alec said.
‘Fuck off,’ said the guy on the ground, closing his eyes again. ‘Get off my fucking lawn.’
‘Maybe this will wake you up,’ Alec said. McQuillan saw the end of a gun barrel in the corner of the video frame. Roberts was waving a gun in the other man’s face with one hand while filming with the other.
‘You were smashed when you came out of that bar,’ they heard Alec shout. ‘You hit him and left him to die.’
‘He was already dead,’ said the guy on the ground, starting to wake up. ‘The guy was cold. He shouldn’t have been out running in the dark.’
The banter between Alec and the drunk went back and forth for several minutes with more of the same.
‘You’re wasted. I saw you come out of that bar. You couldn’t even walk,’ Alec shouted, waving the gun again. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Watch out with that thing. Don’t shoot me,’ the man pleaded.
‘Tell me your fucking name or say goodbye to your head,’ Alec yelled again, pointing the gun right at the man’s scalp.
‘Malecki. Victor Malecki.’
That’s when the video ended.
‘Do you have any idea where this is taking place?’ McQuillan asked Melissa, now sitting up and watching.
‘Something looked familiar,’ she said. There was a long pause. ‘Once, Alec took me to this bagel shop when we were in Metaire doing an errand. He said they had the best bagels in the world. We bought a dozen to take home. I’m not sure, but I think it’s the same street as in this video. That little pub at the beginning of the video, the sign said, Dew Drop Inn. When we went to the bagel store, we parked in front of that place. I only remember because I thought the name was funny.’
McQuillan looked at the time stamp. The video was taken almost six years ago, a few weeks before Quinn Roberts was killed. McQuillan thought he finally had Roberts and his ears were in flames.
‘Melissa,’ he said. ‘Why did you come to West Plain PD and ask specifically for me? You don’t even live in Newbridge, and I work homicide, not SVU.’
‘I know,’ she replied. ‘Every time my husband had a few drinks, which lately was every day, he’d start ranting about a Detective McQuillan in Newbridge and what a nasty SOB you were. You really got under his skin,’ she said.
‘I’m told I have that effect on people,’ McQuillan said smiling.
‘What Alec did to me,’ she continued, ‘I knew you were the person to go to, that you would listen to me. I guess I was right.’
A minute later, McQuillan placed a call to the Metaire PD to confirm what he had seen on the video was legit. They patched him through to the homicide detective on duty. McQuillan asked him if there had been any unresolved fatal hit and run of an adult male from about six years ago near the Dew Drop Inn.
‘You must be talking about Christopher Marshall. He lived here in town, was training for the NYC marathon. Used to go out early before he went to work and run in the dark. Wore two flashing lights and was covered in reflector material,’ the homicide detective said, ‘you couldn’t miss the guy. We always thought the “accident” was either deliberate or a DUI.’
‘Did you ever find
out who hit him?’
‘No,’ said the Metaire cop. ‘No witnesses. According to everyone who knew him, Chris Marshall was a stand-up guy. No enemies. Great family. Good people. The whole town was really broken up when it happened. He used to coach kids’ soccer.’
‘Do you know the name Victor Malecki?’
‘No. Should I?’
‘Oh yeah,’ McQuillan replied.
His next call was to Assistant DA Gonzales.
‘Are you sitting down?’ he said. ‘I think we’ve got the goods on Alec Roberts for his wife’s murder.’
‘You’re shitting me,’ said Gonzales. ‘How the hell did you pull that one out after all this time?’
‘We always knew it was him because of that piece of school newspaper with her address written on it. Our murder for hire theory was right; Alec Roberts must have written his wife’s address down on that scrap of paper for the killer,’ he said. ‘The evidence we found also unmasks the perp of a hit and run six years ago in Metaire. We got a double whammy.’
He told Gonzales to sit tight as he was personally going to walk the evidence over to him. After watching all the videos, Gonzales knew the detective wasn’t blowing smoke. This was evidence he could take to the grand jury.
‘I guess Alec Roberts has finally been “hoisted by his own petard”, as we like to say in legal circles,’ said Gonzales. ‘That asshole was so intent on seeing his naked white ass having sex with all his little girlfriends that he incriminated himself.’
‘Yeah,’ said McQuillan, ‘and even more intent on being some kind of vigilante hero with Malecki, that he implicated himself in a murder for hire. From his soliloquy on the video, it sounded like he thought he was going to end up being famous.’
‘That might still happen, only not for the reason he thought. More like infamous, I’d say. His next photo is going to be a mugshot,’ said Gonzales. ‘I won’t even have to show up in court to win this case.’
Within minutes, the DA’s office had called Judge Montgomery to get an arrest warrant for Alec Roberts. Game, set, and light the fucking kitchen match.
I Am Quinn Page 24