by John Cutter
“Great,” Morrison said. “What else?”
“Well, he’s never been arrested—no prints on file of any kind. We’ve found a few photos of him through a Google search. Looks like he attends Boston College, but we’re still trying to run that down to make sure.”
“Boston College, huh?” Morrison said. “You know what? Let me call Louise Donohue—I think one of her kids went there. She may also have connections in the Boston PD that we could use.”
“Still, huh?”
“Oh, sure. Cops stick together, you know that. It’s a brotherhood. I’m sure any old friends of her husband’s there would have stayed in touch with her, especially given the man Donohue was.”
“Well, give it a try; anything helps.”
“We have anything else?”
“One thing. Pretty interesting, really. When we did the Google search on this kid, we kept seeing one other guy in the pictures we found of him. He’s in almost all of them.”
“You don’t say. Maybe our perp number two, huh?”
“Exactly. We don’t have a name yet, but hopefully if Rutherford friends Tina we’ll be able to get something from his Facebook.”
“Terrific. This is great, Jeff.” The phone rang. “Excuse me, will you? Let me handle this call, and I’ll get everyone together on this.”
“Absolutely.” O’Dell ducked out as Morrison picked up.
“Good morning Bill, it’s Tommy Johnson in the PC’s office.”
“Hey, Tommy,” Morrison said, his stomach tightening. “What’s going on?”
“The boss wants to see you in his office at 1000 hours,” Tommy said. “He wants to discuss this latest homicide with you.”
“All right. How’s he holding up with all the media stuff?”
“Oh, fine. He just told me to get you down here. You know how he is—he’s tired of getting half the answers from Arndt.”
Fair enough, Morrison thought. “Sure, Tommy, I’ll be there,” he said.
When they’d hung up, he called out to Rivera. “Frankie, let’s get everyone in the kitchen,” he said. “I need to speak to them right away.”
“Okay, let’s go around the room,” Morrison started. He looked at Tina. “First thing I want to know is from you, Tina: have you gotten this guy to bite on your friend request yet?”
Tina lit up like a utility infielder who just got a pinch homerun. “Absolutely, boss,” she said. “I put the request in, and not ten minutes later he accepted it.”
“Great. What have we got?”
“Well, the guy’s a real piece of work. His whole Facebook is a self-admiration shrine. I can’t believe how much shit people put on there now. We got confirmation that he goes to Boston College, and lives in a dorm on campus. His roommate there is a lifelong friend, a guy named Brian Anderson.”
Morrison looked over at O’Dell, who was nodding. “You got it,” O’Dell said. “Anderson matches our second guy from the video by height and weight.”
“Bingo,” Morrison said. “So what do we have on this Anderson guy?”
“Another kid of privilege,” O’Dell said. “His parents also live in Greenwich, in a house slightly smaller than Rutherford’s—a humble 15,000 square feet.” A murmur of laughter went around the room. “He’s another student at Boston, as Tina said; no criminal record on him either. And something else from Rutherford’s Facebook account: we have a few pictures of the two of them at an event here in New York City, on the night of the Sutton Place homicide.”
“Okay,” Morrison said, clapping his hands together for emphasis. “You all know the drill at this point. We need to focus on these two guys, either to close the ring around them as suspects or to rule them out. Anyone else?”
“I’ve already reached out to the Greenwich PD,” said Sergeant McNamara. “I have a contact there from a homicide course I did a couple of years ago. Hopefully they’ll be able to help us.”
“Great. Have your team pack their bags; I’m going to have you guys head out to Boston. We need to get more on these guys, and fast. These guys make any moves, I want you on them. Get me some evidence that we can test for connections to the crime scene—cigarette butts, coffee cups, anything.”
McNamara was already standing, along with the rest of his team. “We all have a change of clothes in our lockers; we’ll head out now,” he said.
“All right. O’Dell,” Morrison said, turning to the tall veteran, “you’re our point man on anything and everything we pull up on these guys. Put it all together for us. Go as far back as you need to—hell, get me their kindergarten graduation photos if you can. The rest of you, get anything you can to O’Dell.” He stood, putting on his coat. “I’m headed to the PC’s office—I want everything we have before I get there. Rivera—?”
“You got it, Cap. I’ll call you on your way.”
“All right. I’ll call Louise Donohue on the way, too—she may have a useful connection or two for us.” Morrison took a deep breath. “Let’s hope these are our guys.”
16
“Good morning, Captain Morrison.”
Irene, the PC’s executive assistant, had been there as long as Morrison could remember, and had to be one of the best gate-keepers in the history of the department. She’d held off all of the top brass at one time or another—no one got past her without an appointment. Tough as nails, that little old lady.
“Commissioner Harrington is back early,” she told him with a pleasant smile. “You can go right in.”
“Thanks, Irene.”
Morrison opened the door. The Commissioner was sitting at his desk, but stood to greet Morrison when he came in. Morrison had seen him make top people squirm in meetings many times before, and he knew from the look on the PC’s face that this would not be one of those days.
“Good morning, Commissioner,” Morrison said respectfully.
“Bill, we go too far back for formalities behind closed doors,” Harrington said warmly. “You know that.”
“Indeed we do, Commissioner,” answered Morrison with a smile. His respect for the city’s top cop was too great to allow him to slip into first names; Robert Harrington had been Police Commissioner for two mayoral terms, and had been an outstanding cop for his entire career before that.
“Suit yourself,” laughed Harrington as they sat. “Well, Bill, give me the rundown on what we have going on here.”
“Well, boss, in the last twelve hours we just got a huge break,” Morrison said. “We now have two white male suspects: Adam Rutherford and Brian Anderson, early twenties. They both come from Greenwich, Connecticut, from wealthy families. This is all still fairly fresh, so we don’t have everything we need just yet, but I can give you what we’ve got. Neither of them has ever been arrested—not even a traffic ticket that we can find. No prints on file, so AFIS means nothing right now. One of them owns a BMW that matches the one we have on video from at least one scene, possibly another. We are into one Facebook account, and have photo evidence from it that they were in the city on the night of the homicide on Sutton Place. I have a team, led by Sergeant McNamara, already on the way to Boston College to conduct surveillance, develop any information they can on these guys, and recover DNA samples if possible.”
“Is that Patrick McNamara?” Harrington asked.
“That’s right, Commissioner.”
“Good man—no one’s better at surveillance.”
“I agree, sir.”
“All right, what else?”
“Well, I’m told the timeline of our homicides coincides with the school’s holiday break, so there’s more plausibility that these are our guys. We have a few selfies of them from Facebook; my impression is that we have a leader and a follower. I just spoke with Sergeant Rivera on the way here, and they’ve found a few articles about Rutherford saying that he turned down a scholarship to Harvard so he and his buddy Brian Anderson could go to Boston College together. Seems they’re inseparable—which should make it easier for us to find them both.”
&
nbsp; “Okay. Is that all we have?”
“Yes sir, for the time being. I’m hopeful we’ll have a lot more within the next several days. Obviously, we’re still running down some other leads, until we close the loop on these guys; I can’t ignore those other avenues. But this is our biggest lead.”
“Bill, I’m going to be frank with you,” Harrington said. “The city’s starting to panic on this one. The mayor keeps reminding me how serial killers are bad for tourism—as if I need to hear that. We need to stop these homicides, now.”
“I understand, Commissioner. We’re working around the clock on it.”
“I trust you, Bill. I just wanted to speak to you in person about this. I’ve been getting such a runaround from our illustrious Chief of Detectives, I felt I needed to talk to someone I have faith in, for a change.”
“Thank you, Commissioner. But since you brought him up,” Morrison added, “I wanted to let you know: Arndt just dropped a guy onto the task force, Lou Galipoli—new detective. All my people get a bad vibe from this guy, so I’ve marginalized him within the task force, but I’m afraid that won’t last, since he’s Arndt’s boy. I’m worried that the efficacy of our work could be jeopardized, especially with the media now involved.”
“I understand,” Harrington said. “I’ll keep Arndt out of your hair for now.”
“Thanks, boss. It means a lot to me.”
“Sure thing, Bill. Just keep me up on this as it develops. You have my cell. If we get another break, call me right away.”
“I will, Commissioner.”
When Morrison got back to the squad room, he found Rivera, Medveded, and Koreski going over all the variables in their case folder, updating the case flow chart. The chart was not the sort of thing the general public ever saw, and certainly nothing like they used on Law & Order; it included everything from a timeline of the victims’ movements prior to their deaths, to gruesome crime-scene photos, to whatever information they’d managed to glean from Rutherford’s Facebook page so far. Tina had even pinned up a photo of the two suspects from their Greenwich private high-school yearbook—they looked like two little preppy angels.
“Frankie, have we heard from McNamara yet?” Morrison asked.
“Yeah, they made it to Boston,” Rivera told him. “Found the car parked on the street. They’re set up on it until they see either of these guys.”
“Nothing yet, though?”
“No, not yet. It’s a big campus you set them to wander around—three campuses, in fact, and about 14,000 students.”
“I know, I know. I just have a feeling, that’s all. They didn’t hook up with Boston PD yet, did they?”
“No, boss—they took a couple of undercover cars from Narcotics, and aren’t talking to any of the locals until you give them the green light. One team went to Greenwich to check the homes out; the other’s in Boston, sitting on the car.”
“All right. Time to be patient, I guess.”
Just then, Morrison’s cell phone rang.
“McNamara,” he said as he picked up, smiling at Rivera on the way into his office. “What’s going on?”
“Well, Cap, I think I’m on one of our guys,” he heard McNamara say in a low voice. “The shorter one—Anderson. I’m not a hundred percent on it, but I’ve got one of my guys helping me follow him anyway.”
“Good. And the rest?”
“Back on the car still, in case Rutherford comes around.”
“What’s Anderson doing?”
“Seems like he’s just hanging around the campus,” McNamara said. “Doesn’t seem like he’s in any rush to get to class, that’s for sure. Though it is late in the day; he might be done. He also seems like a bit of a social misfit—he doesn’t make eye contact with any of the women on campus, but he tries to look up their skirts when they walk past.”
“That’s got to be our guy,” Morrison said. “Holy shit, that easy, huh?”
“Yeah, how’s it feel to be so smart?” McNamara laughed.
“Damn lucky,” Morrison said. “Well, listen, don’t get made—remember, we need some good DNA or fingerprint samples from these guys. That may be our only way of tying them to the crime scene. Keep me posted.”
“Will do, Cap. Talk soon.”
Morrison hung up and leaned back, letting the rush sink in. Today was just getting better and better. It looked like he was even going to have a few free hours tonight. He picked up his cell phone again and dialed Claudia.
“Captain Morrison, the Bullshit Remover!” she answered. “How’s your day going, my love?”
“A lot better than I thought it was going to,” he said with a pent-up laugh.
“Yeah? That’s great!”
“Believe me, it is. How do you feel about spending two nights in a row in my excellent company?” He realized, as he said it, that he was actually apprehensive of how she’d respond—how could such good luck last? But her response was immediate.
“Absolutely!”
“Great,” he said, trying not to sound too relieved. “I ought to be done around seven, I think, if you want to meet me. What do you say we hit the Capital Grille, over here?”
“Oh, I love that place. Be warned, though, if we go there I’m going to make you try a pineapple martini.”
The thought brought a smile to his face. “Baby, I’ll try anything you want me to try,” he said, shaking his head bemusedly.
“I’m going to hold you to that!” she laughed.
17
Morrison parked out in front of the Capital Grille, where he could keep an eye on the car. It was an old work habit that died hard; not only was he responsible for the department car, but he was proud of driving it. He felt it to be symbolic of the job that, for all its complications, had kept him going through the years, and saved his life at least as many times as it had risked it—one of the few things that had ever made him feel completely at ease with himself.
Now, entering the restaurant, he found one of the others waiting for him. Claudia was at the bar, drinking one of her aforementioned pineapple martinis. Morrison gave her a kiss on the cheek, and signaled to the bartender.
“I’ll have another of the same,” he said, smiling at her. “You won’t regret it, I promise,” she said. “So how did your day end out? As good as you were saying before?”
“Yeah, it was a good one. One of my teams managed to get a tail on one of our suspects, so hopefully our case will be making strides soon. But let’s talk about you first—I really miss you when I’m not with you—I want to know all about you.”
“I know what you mean,” she said. “But that’s a big question! Where should I start?”
He wasn’t quite sure. “Well, you’ve said you have the same feeling I do, that this is a big break for you, that you’ve had a bad history with relationships—you were married before?”
“Yeah,” she mused, toying with her glass. “Angelo. I don’t know why; he was the biggest mistake of my life. I think I was just getting older—I mean, not really that old, but thirty, you know—I think I was just afraid I’d miss out on being married. It was a big deal for me growing up; there’s a lot of pressure to get married in Greek families like mine.”
“Was he Greek too?”
“No, but that didn’t matter to my family. They were just relieved that I was getting married. My parents really wanted me to have a big wedding, especially my dad, so we did—”
“Big Fat Greek Wedding, huh?”
She laughed. “Yeah, just like that, except not all good. Mostly bad, really.”
“Why so?”
“Oh, Angelo was a jealous man—really over-the-top jealous. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe. He had to know my every move. When I was a little girl in Astoria, I had a Greek teacher who’d come to the house on Wednesdays—oh, of course,” she said as his eyes widened, “there was no way I wasn’t learning the Greek language. We’re a very proud people! Well, this teacher would use my parents’ phone to talk to his wife, you know, con
stantly asking her questions. Where did you go today? Who were you with? Very possessive. Anyway, Angelo reminded me of that teacher. But he started to change—or at least I finally started to notice it. I overlooked everything for a long time to keep my family happy.”
“How do you mean, he started to change? He got more possessive?”
“No, that stayed the same; he just got more distant. I think he never wanted me, but he didn’t want to look bad either—he had an old-fashioned Italian family, so in a way we both got married for the wrong reason. But the change was really obvious. At first he wouldn’t come home. I thought he was off playing bocce; he was in lots of clubs. Then he started spending all his time on the Internet, talking to his friends. He was in the computer field—that was his business—so at first I assumed it was research he was doing. I later found out he was talking in chat rooms.”
“To other women?”
“So I assumed! But then I came home early one day and his computer was on, and I looked. He was talking to other men.”
Morrison nodded. “I see.”
“I was shocked,” she said. “All that time I thought it was me!”
“But that’s not the worst thing that could happen, I guess,” Morrison said. “At least you knew it wasn’t you.”
“Yeah. We were both hurt, but we were both relieved to stop living a lie, too. It wasn’t really all that bad; it just went on for a long time, for how unhappy it made both of us.” She took a sip of her drink. “Anyway, your turn, Silent Detective. Why’s your life so fucked up?”
“Oh, mine’s a long story.”
“I’ve got all night.” She smiled. “Well, not all night. But you know what I mean. Besides, they haven’t even shown us to our table yet.”
He laughed. “Well, it wasn’t so dissimilar, I guess,” he said. “Except I was married to what I thought was a really spectacular woman—had everything you could want. We had two great kids together. It’s kind of sad, but I remember the day I figured out she was cheating on me.”