She said, “As I said, it’s not my division, but I have access to everything on the developer. Nickolay Lebedev is the twenty-nine-year-old son of Victor Lebedev, who decamped the teetering Soviet Union some thirty years ago, came here, and made a fortune in gambling. Jordan Baldacci, without the resources I have, found that out for herself. And that both Nikolay and his father were known for leaning on people to get what they want. Baldacci questioned the manner in which the city council, in its wisdom, changed the zoning to allow for Nikolay Lebedev’s Pelham Bay project.”
“The manner?”
“Hasty, Councilman Torres.”
“There was nothing that–”
“Jordan Baldacci questioned – she posed the question – was there intimidation? Was there coercion? And then she was murdered.”
Torres shook his head and backed away. “I’ve seen everything on the news, read the articles – she was there at the scene of a crime. Anyone could have gone and opened that dumpster.”
“No,” Shannon said. “She was chosen. And we have the evidence to back that up.” Shannon pushed her card at him. “Take it. Call me if you have anything you want to …” She almost said confess. “If anything comes to mind. Anything you want to talk about. Day or night.”
Torres stared at her. Finally, he snatched the card from her fingers, turned on his heel and strode away. He looked back at her only once he’d reached the safety of the other council members gathered in the center of the room, where they’d been furtively watching.
Shannon tipped them a smile and left.
14
Torres had a point about Diaz. And he was right. There was no record of the TV reporter covering property development in Torres’s Bronx district.
“But maybe,” Shannon said to Bufort, “there doesn’t have to be.”
They were in her office, Bufort eating a scone while he eyed the wall of notes, photographs, newspaper articles, and printed screenshots of TV news. Bufort brushed aside some of his blond bangs. “I think you’ve watched Homeland one too many times.” He took a bite of the scone.
She explained: “There doesn’t have to be a connection to Diaz if Nikolay Lebedev wanted it to camouflage his motives. If he wants it to look like something else, like hatred of the media. Consider how quick Diaz was, how Forbes took longer between abduction and death and discovery. Like she was questioned.”
“No questioning of Baldacci.”
“True. Or Diaz could’ve been killed by someone else, and Lebedev used that as the cover. NYPD was never quite able to clear Diaz’s ex-boyfriend. He had a shaky alibi and a history of violence. So maybe Lebedev never touched her, but saw an opportunity in her death. Make the deaths of Forbes and Baldacci look like they were a part of something that …”
Shannon trailed off, turning around to gaze at her wall, doubting her own theory.
Bufort voiced those same doubts: “But Forbes was only poking around in it. Baldacci wrote up a whole feature, questioning the motives of Torres, raising the question whether Nikolay Lebedev was a money-laundering Russian mobster. So Lebedev whacks Forbes? Leaks her dump site to the press in order to get Baldacci there and blow her up? If Lebedev is really connected, he doesn’t have to do any of that.” Bufort wiped his mouth with a napkin and said, “They whacked that guy last year, Lebedev’s people. He was sitting at the McDonald’s drive-through. One in his head and four in his chest. That’s how they do it.”
Bufort made sense, but it was too soon to let it go. More could come to light.
After Bufort left, she spent the next few hours getting additional background on Nikolay Lebedev and going through the Jordan Baldacci timeline. These crimes felt personal to Shannon. And while you typically saw that “personal” nature expressed in the type of victim – in this case, attractive female reporters – there was nevertheless something that felt perfunctory about their deaths. Almost clinical. Yes, two of the victims had been strangled. She tried to imagine the willpower it took to get behind someone, wrap a belt around their neck and squeeze. To maintain that pressure while they kicked and flailed, jerked and spasmed. She tried to imagine and couldn’t. Because to carry through such an act typically meant you were born missing a key part of your brain. Or it meant you had experienced something so traumatic that it broke you. Changed you. Two of the victims had been strangled, but one had been lured into a trap and murdered in a violent explosion. That also took willpower, but of a different sort. It was a remarkably different MO – remote, technical, skilled. Suggesting – possibly – a killer with wartime experience, like S. Martinez had suggested. After all, humans did unspeakable thing to other humans in times of war.
Shannon tapped a pen against her thigh and consulted the wall some more. It was going on five o’clock in the afternoon. She stared up at an image of Jordan Baldacci she’d pulled from the internet. An absolute stunner, that Baldacci. A towheaded Italian woman with a voluptuous figure.
Beside her, Monica Forbes was also beautiful, but older, and dark-haired. If Baldacci was Marilyn Monroe, Forbes was Audrey Hepburn. And then there was Diaz, a Latina woman, a different look altogether. All three were attractive women, no question about it. But, then, TV people usually were. And Baldacci, not a TV person, but a journalist, could have just been incidentally beautiful. It happened! Pretty people did occupy other professions as well.
Shannon realized she was getting a bit punchy. She needed to eat; maybe that would help ground her. But she kept looking over the wall, not moving, letting her mind wander through it all.
If Lebedev had gotten so up close and personal (manual strangulation, bathing a victim) and so brutally violent (taking off a victim’s head with a dumpster bomb) – it suggested more than “just business,” but something personal. Which was what she was looking for. And the thing about young Nikolay, she’d learned – he was a hothead.
One of his properties was a Bronx nightclub. About eighteen months previous, a customer had ostensibly made a pass at one of the club bartenders, and Nikolay had beaten the guy so badly he’d put him in the hospital for a month. They’d settled out of court for $750,000, a big price to pay for having a bad temper, a misplaced sense of gallantry.
It was one reason she wasn’t ready to let go of the lead. Guys like Lebedev, who acted so overprotective of women, were often also possessive of them, too. It was more about property, about ownership, than it was feminism or equality.
Yeah. The more she studied him, the more she could imagine Nikolay Lebedev so undone by Jordan Baldacci’s reportage, so enraged that a woman would write such things about him and his planned apartment building – that the community didn’t want it or him around, for one – he wanted her dead. And in a big way.
And then when he found out Forbes was looking into the same story, considering getting into it on The Scene and reaching even more people, that was the last straw. Lebedev concocted a way to get them both, and to make it look like something else.
The phone rang, startling her. “Ames.”
“We got some rubber,” Caldoza said.
“From Fifty-Fourth?”
“From Fifty-Fourth. Right outside the SuperShuttle lot.”
“How much?”
“A bit. It’s going for processing. I’ll let you know if there’s anything solid – obviously there’s lots of trucks coming and going through there – but wanted to let you know.”
“Nothing else? Foot impressions?”
“Not yet. I was hoping for a torn piece of paper that said ‘I did it’ with a name and address, but we’re going to have to keep looking.”
“Thank you, Luis.”
“You eaten anything since yesterday morning? Besides hospital food?”
She thought back and realized she couldn’t remember much beyond the nuclear-green Jell-O brought to her in the hospital bed. “I probably should.”
“You like cold pizza?”
“I eat anything.”
“A woman of discerning tastes. I like it. Well, we�
��ve got pizza down here at the station. And guess who’s coming for dinner.”
“You wrangled Todd Spencer?”
“Yes, ma’am. Roped him and tied him. He’s on his way from the city, and he’s going to be here in, like, an hour. Thought you’d want to get in on this.”
“I do.”
“I’m coming to get you. We’ll swing by Fifty-Fourth and get back here in time.”
She started to protest, but Caldoza had already hung up.
Downstairs, he stood next to his car, a black Mustang.
“Oh, you’re one of those cops,” she said, giving it a closer look. She knew a little about cars from her brothers. The Mustang looked sixth generation. Boxy but sleek, with silver Hot Rod rims.
“Yeah, I guess so.” A smile played at the corners of his mouth. The sun was getting low, but the day was still busy. Traffic rushed all around – Queens Boulevard, Jackie Robinson Parkway, Union Turnpike. The way it whooshed and swirled around the building in Kew Gardens could make you think the FBI satellite office there was the center of the world.
Caldoza’s smile faded as he watched her walk. “How you doing?”
“The doctor said ‘lateral abdominal wall hematoma collecting on the left side of the back and expanding inferiorly into the left gluteal region.’”
“Pure medical poetry,” Caldoza said. He moved to the back of the car and pressed a button. The trunk lid swung slowly upward. Caldoza leaned in, his body blocking her view. He retrieved an item. “I got something for you.”
For a moment, she was speechless, feeling both flattered and uneasy. Then she took the cane from him and tested it for length. “Where did this come from?”
“My grandfather. Had shrapnel in his knee. Hated the cane, but he’d use it when no one was looking.”
She looked up at him, still feeling those mixed feelings. This was incredibly thoughtful, but could cross a line. “Won’t he miss it?”
“He’s not vertical anymore. He’s over in Rosebush Cemetery, been there for fifteen years. I got all his old stuff. Only grandson. I thought you could use it, and he’d want you to have it.”
The cane had a curved wooden handle, well worn, atop the metal alloy rod. She leaned her weight on it and took a step, alleviating some of the pressure. Caldoza watched, looking pleased.
“Luis,” she said, “I, ah …”
His expression sobered, and he gave a slight shake of his head and raised his hand. “Hey, listen. I’m not, ah … I had it, okay? I saw the way you’ve been gimping around.”
She watched him for a moment, waiting for signs she’d wounded his pride, but either he was being on-the-level platonic or had an excellent poker face. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m just … you know?”
“Hey, say no more. I get it. Handsome guy like me, you don’t want to give the wrong impression.” He winked and opened the door for her.
Good grief, it still felt like a date. Caldoza went around to the driver’s side as she got in.
He drove fast but not too fast, engine growling, and they reached the crime scene in less than ten minutes. He then slowed once they reached Fifty-Fourth. They jostled over potholes, past a barrier of corrugated metal sheets on the left, a sagging chain-link fence on the right. Then they were back in familiar territory – the SuperShuttle lot – the place she couldn’t quite get at yesterday with all the press around. They were gone now.
Out of the Mustang, Caldoza lifted the crime scene tape and Shannon ducked underneath. She was using the cane and feeling awkward about that, but to be honest, it was better.
Numbers marked evidentiary spots on the road. Caldoza squatted near one and opened his hand. “Right here. Someone pulled out of the lot and hit the gas hard, left a little rubber behind. Crime scene got some with a gelatin lifter. They’re trying different tires on paper, looking for pattern matches with what crossed the dirt there in the lot. But preliminary findings, it’s from an SUV.”
From the angle, Shannon couldn’t see the bus. She didn’t need to. She could see Monica Forbes clearly, lying on her stomach, head to the side, eyes open, lips parted, neck bruised.
Shannon touched her own face and neck. Caldoza slowly rose, watching her.
The lowering sun was now behind the Manhattan skyline. The light around Shannon left no shadow.
Todd Spencer wore his hair in the pompadour style, shaved on the sides, high and greased on top. A middle-aged hipster, with the eyeglasses to match; thick black frames on top, rimless bottoms. He looked bored, sitting across from Detective Heinz. Shannon watched through the one-way glass, Caldoza and Whitaker beside her.
“Okay,” Heinz said, “Mr. Spencer, thank you for coming down.”
“Mmhmm.”
“We’ve, ah, we’ve asked you here today because, as you know, we had a situation Wednesday afternoon …”
“You could say that, yeah.”
Heinz, who seemed to Shannon the picture of unflappable, leaned back a little in his chair. “Would you call it something else, Mr. Spencer?”
“I mean, really? Fucking IEDs going off in the street? Blowing up reporters? It’s a fucking attack on the fourth estate is what it is. It’s some alt-right lunatic out there, someone who thinks Donald Trump was sent by baby Jesus.”
Heinz nodded a little, as if this made sense, as if he’d given it his own serious consideration. “You aware, though, that Ms. Baldacci filed a lawsuit against you? For sexual harassment?”
“Am I aware?” Spencer glanced at the mirror, perhaps checking his own reflection, or thinking about the persons on its other side. “Of course I’m aware. But it’s bullshit.”
“It’s bullshit,” Heinz said, his head still bobbing up and down. “Unfounded.”
Spencer smiled. He rocked back in his chair a little, then set it down hard on all four legs and jammed his finger at Heinz. “You’re something. I mean, you ask me to come in. You say it’s because you’re ‘getting a picture of Jordan Baldacci’s life.’” He hung air quotes around the phrase. “You think I don’t know? What it means that you’re getting some background on me? Jesus Christ. Yes, there is a fucking lawsuit pending. No, I did nothing to warrant those allegations. Baldacci is … well, I’m not going to speak poorly of someone who’s passed on. Okay?”
“But she brought it on herself, or something? Is that what you were going to say?”
“Listen, I don’t need this shit,” Spencer said. He pushed the chair back, the legs making loud scrapes. He stood. “Let me out of here.”
On her side of the glass, Whitaker leaned down and spoke in Shannon’s ear. “Do me a favor?”
She looked up into his cool blue eyes.
“Get in there?” he asked.
Caldoza was watching.
Shannon said, “Why me?”
Whitaker looked her up and down. “Honestly, because he’ll probably like you. Maybe he’ll give something up.”
Caldoza stepped in. “That’s bullshit. Lieutenant, all due respect, that’s sexist.”
The two men stared at each other as Shannon left the room. She’d already decided for herself it was a good idea. She rounded the corner from the viewing room and knocked on the door. Heinz said, “Come in,” and she opened it on Todd Spencer, his face twisted with anger. He saw her and his expression smoothed and he said, “Who are you?”
“Special Agent Shannon Ames. Can I talk to you before you go?”
He looked her over, then he stepped back and held out his arm, suddenly the cordial host. “Be my guest.”
“Thank you,” she said, and stepped in, but not far enough to let him close the door. She held out her own hand, offering Spencer a seat. His mouth hooked into a smug smile. She closed the door behind her as he sat, and then she walked toward the mirror and got a good look at herself. She licked her lips, knowing the two men were watching on the other side. Heinz stood up and moved to the door. Spencer never took his eyes off Shannon as she sat down.
They watched each other across the table. S
he could smell his cologne, something overly musky.
“So, Mr. Spencer, you’re a journalist, like Jordan was.”
“Yes ma’am.” He quickly added, “Well, not like her …”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I don’t want to be a … you know. She just … She worked very hard. I’m not sure she was writing to her strengths, though.” The corner of his mouth went up again.
“How do you mean?”
He glanced at the ceiling and sighed. “You know, just, out of her field. Women’s fare. Baldacci tried too hard. She tried to be something she wasn’t, and I think it just came through in the work.” He barked a laugh. “She wasn’t an intellectual, but she tried to be.”
“Do you feel you are, though? Writing to your strengths?”
He made a face she thought was meant to evoke humility. “Oh, well, it’s not what I think, really, now is it? That’s not how we’re judged.”
“And how are we judged?”
He made an exaggerated shrug and held his hands out, palms up. Then he waved at the air, a dismissive gesture. “Look – at the end of the day, what we do is, we report the news. And we try to get it to as many people as possible. Whether it’s a little prettier or not in its presentation, who really cares, right? The point is to get it out, get it wide. Reach as many people as you can. I switched from running cameras to writing, and I’ve had a decent reach with my work. And I think that’s because, yes, I’ve been writing to my strengths. Writing about the stuff that suits me. Someone like Jordan – and again, I don’t mean to speak ill of the dead, I think she wrote what she thought she should be writing – still, that can hurt a writer. It really can. And when she came to me, and we talked about this, that’s what I told her. Honestly, I don’t think she liked hearing it. I don’t think she could deal.”
“You’re referring to a dinner you attended with Baldacci. A little less than two months ago.”
“Yeah. Right.”
“The night she claims you offered to help her career if she slept with you. You’d put in a good word, you said, with an uncle of yours who works at the Times.”
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