“That’s what you came to tell us?” I ask.
“Yes, and to say that it is ridiculous that you think he might have shot those people. My father would never hurt anyone, except himself. But that is all behind him.”
Nate asks her specifically if she has ever heard her father mention Brookings, or Randowsky, or Maglie. It does not come as a shock to us when she says that she has not.
“But I can tell you this,” she continues. “The newspaper said that the man at the hotel was shot the night before last at six thirty in the evening.”
“So?”
“So I was with my dad. I brought over some heroes and we ate them at his apartment. We watched a baseball game.”
If she’s telling the truth, we just lost our leading suspect. But we’ve also just eased my potentially guilty conscience.
The shooting of Chuck Maglie has shaken the public far more than the previous ones.
I’m sure that part of it is just because it comes so soon on the heels of the Randowsky shooting. Brookings and Randowsky were many months apart, and people didn’t really feel the connection, even though we announced it. But now, with Maglie following just days later, it’s starting to feel like a state of siege has taken over.
Also, I think on some level Maglie’s occupation contributes to the panic. Brookings was a very successful businessman and Randowsky a prominent attorney, so it felt like if there was a pattern, it was that elites were under attack. But Maglie was a bellman, a common working man, so his death broadens the range of those who have legitimate reason to be fearful.
Bradley is about to start another press conference, which Nate and I are stuck attending. This time the mood is a bit more contentious; based on what I’ve been reading in the newspaper and seeing on television, the press is hungrier for information. Nobody is going to meekly accept the “ongoing investigation” excuse for avoiding answering the tough questions.
This time, unlike the first press conference, the chief, commissioner, and the mayor are all here. I’m sure they don’t want to be, but my assumption is that they made a value judgment.
On the one hand, they certainly don’t want to stand here and say they don’t have a clue who is killing their citizens. It makes them look impotent and ineffectual. In the mayor’s case, “Impotent and Ineffectual” does not make for a good election campaign bumper sticker.
But the offset is that not to have shown up would send a signal that they don’t give a shit about those same citizens.
Clearly they have opted for appearing to give a shit.
Bradley starts off by thanking everyone for being here. He says that he will provide a brief update on the investigation and then the mayor will say a few words. Then they will take questions, though Bradley once again cautions that he knows everyone will understand that he can’t get into details of the “ongoing investigation.”
“I’m going to be very up-front and direct,” is how Bradley starts, and I think I see the mayor wince at the words. “We now have three shooting victims: Mr. Brookings some eighteen months ago, Mr. Randowsky, and Mr. Maglie this week. I assume you all know the circumstances and locations of these shootings, since you’ve reported on them extensively.”
He goes on to say that our collective hearts and prayers go out to the victims and their families. I’ve got a feeling that’s not going to be sufficient either to placate the families or solve the crimes.
Bradley continues, “All three of these gentlemen were shot with the same weapon, an M4 rifle. We are therefore operating under the assumption that there is one perpetrator, and that perpetrator is an accomplished marksman.
“I am telling you these details because we need the help of the public. If you know someone who possesses this type of weapon, and also has a demonstrated ability in marksmanship, then we want that person’s name.
“But I want to be careful not to limit it to that. If anyone has any information that might be of help to us, no matter how vague it might be, we want to hear from you. There is an anonymous tip line set up; just call, tell us what you know, and we’ll take it from there. Every little bit of credible information helps, no matter how small.
“We have a number of persons of interest, but no one that has risen to the level of suspect, and therefore no one we are prepared to name now. I understand the concern of the public, I share it, and I can only assure you that every resource we have is dedicated to putting this killer behind bars. And with your help, we will do just that.”
Bradley turns it over to the mayor, who sets a mayoral record for fewest words spoken at a press conference. Then he steps way back … so far back that I’m afraid he’ll fall off the makeshift stage, in order to leave Bradley to answer questions on his own.
Bradley takes a half-dozen questions, but no one succeeds in getting any more information out of him, and the truth is, he has no more information to give. When it ends, as he is leaving, he whispers to me, “I don’t want to go through this again. Catch the son of a bitch.”
When we get back to the station we are greeted with the unwelcome news that the ballistics tests on William Gero’s M4 show that it is not the rifle used in the shootings. I’m not surprised, though I am disappointed.
This doesn’t clear Gero entirely; he could certainly have another M4 that we don’t know about. This is a guy who owns a rifle range. The unknown other weapon might have been purchased illegally, making it a more likely candidate to be used in the commission of a crime.
Gero has the closest thing we have to a motive, at least in the Randowsky shooting. The guy represented his ex-wife in a contentious divorce. But if there was a category below “person of interest”—maybe “person barely on the radar screen,” then that’s where Gero would be stationed.
I see on my desk that there is a message to call Andy Carpenter, Phelan’s attorney. I call him back, and he says, “You wanted to know where my client was the night of the hotel shooting.”
“I still do.”
“He was having dinner at Patsy’s.”
I know Patsy’s; it’s an Italian restaurant in downtown Paterson known for its great pizza. “Who was he eating with?” I ask.
“Two of his friends,” Carpenter says, and gives me their names and phone numbers.
“What time?”
“They got there at seven fifteen. The reservation was in his name.”
“Where was he before that?” I ask. The shooting was at 6:30, so this does not get Phelan off the hook.
“He was home, and then drove to the restaurant. He didn’t stop off to lie in wait and shoot a bellman.”
“So says his lawyer.”
“So says his lawyer about his innocent client,” Carpenter says. “I’m telling you, you’re wasting your time. And if you charge him, I’ll get him off, and you’ll have wasted more time.”
“I may want to talk to him again. Tell him not to do any traveling.”
“We’ll come in whenever you want. We are concerned citizens, dedicated to helping our police avoid the public humiliation of arresting the wrong person and then having to issue a less-than-heartfelt apology.”
I get off the call. The alibi that Carpenter provided is not conclusive, but that’s not what I’m focusing on. Julie Phelan told us that she brought in hero sandwiches that night, and she and her father watched a baseball game.
Now I find out that forty-five minutes after the shooting, Danny Phelan was at Patsy’s with a couple of his friends. My guess is that the story will check out.
What all this means is that Julie Phelan lied.
“She was covering for her father,” Jessie says. “She believes in him, and she stupidly made up a story to help his situation. She thought you’d buy it and leave him alone.”
“She lied to law enforcement, which is a crime in itself,” I say. “I know that because I happen to be law enforcement. I could show you my badge, and I know the secret law-enforcement handshake.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. Nate is pissed about it; he thinks we should charge her, or at least scare the hell out of her. I’m a little less worked up about it. What do you think?”
“I think you should keep your eye on the ball; this is just a daughter stupidly trying to help her father. In the grand scheme of things it’s not important. Does Phelan’s restaurant alibi hold up?”
I shrug. “Yes and no, but more on the no side. He was definitely at Patsy’s, but he would have had time to do the shooting and then go to the restaurant. So it’s not really an alibi at all.”
“So he’s still your best bet at this point?”
“I’m afraid so,” I say.
“Why do you put it that way?”
I’m not sure I want to go where this conversation is going, but I go there anyway. “Couple of reasons. First of all, if Phelan is our leading candidate, it means we don’t have much in the way of candidates. Because even though we have more on him than on anyone else, it doesn’t mean we have a hell of a lot on him.
“And second, if by some chance he’s the shooter, it means I missed him last time. Which means that Randowsky and Maglie and someone else died because of my miss. And there’s still a lot of potential victims left on that wall.”
“It happens all the time, Doug. We have a suspect, and then we back off, and then we go after him again. An investigation is a fluid thing; you can’t get it right the first time every time.”
“I’ll remember that,” I say. “It will be one of the few things about the investigation that I’ll remember.”
“Don’t start feeling sorry for yourself,” she says.
“Thanks for the advice. I’ll try and remember that too. Maybe I should be taking notes.”
I may not be the brightest bulb in the socket, but I know when I’m being obnoxious. Rather than trying to correct it, it’s easier to exit the conversation, which is what I do by taking Bobo for a walk. Bobo is even less likely to put up with my shit than Jessie.
We walk into town and stop at a small deli. I sometimes get Bobo a bagel as a peace offering. He takes the entire bagel in his mouth in what seems like one gulp; it’s a scary sight. When he’s finished, he just looks at me in disgust, as if to say, “That’s all you got?”
The town seems less crowded than usual. I heard someone say on the radio that people in North Jersey have been less inclined to leave their houses because of the shootings. I don’t know if this is evidence of it or not; it’s possible it’s just an off night in town.
When I get home I sit down to go over the case files that I’ve brought home with me. We have so many cops working the case that I don’t have nearly enough time to read all the reports they file during the day.
The first one is some background stuff on the hotel shooting. There are a bunch of witness reports, which are basically misnamed, since only one person actually witnessed anything. But there is one of some interest to me. A woman who had parked her car near where the shot was fired reported seeing a white SUV parked at a strange angle.
The woman noticed it when she retrieved her car at least a half hour before the murder took place. In fact, she was halfway to Pennsylvania before she even heard about the killing on the radio.
It triggers something in my mind, but I’m not at all sure if I’m right. “You feel like taking a ride?” I ask Jessie.
“Where to?”
“Garfield.”
“I hear Garfield is beautiful this time of year,” she says.
“Think of it as my way of making it up to you for being so obnoxious before.”
“I don’t think Garfield will do it, but it’s a first step,” she says as she grabs the car keys.
I program Phelan’s address in the GPS, and we’re off. Twenty minutes later we pull up to his house.
I know it’s his, because of the address, and because there is a Ford Escape in the driveway. It’s an SUV, and it’s white.
“You shouldn’t come over for a while,” Danny Phelan said. “The police are trying to pin these shootings on me.”
His daughter Julie had come to see him, which in itself was not unusual. It was rare that a week went by without her at least talking to him, and that included the time he was in prison. But this time she had brought along her fiancé, James McKinney.
Danny had met James a few times; he didn’t know him well at all, but was pleased that James had made Julie’s life easier financially. That’s something he was never able to manage.
“I know,” Julie said. “I spoke to them.”
“They came to your house?”
“No, I went to see them. The cop named Brock and his partner. A big guy.”
Phelan turned back to Julie. “Why did you do that?” He was clearly agitated at hearing this.
Before she could answer, he turned to McKinney. “You need to stop her from doing these things.”
McKinney smiled. “Believe me, I have tried. Your daughter has a mind of her own.”
“Mom told me they suspected you, so I wanted to tell them they were wrong, that you would never do something like that.”
“Your mother spoke to them also?”
She nodded. “Yeah. I figured she didn’t have such good things to say. She never does, so I wanted to set them straight.”
“You got that right about her.” Then, “Thanks for doing that, honey, but you should stay out of it.”
“There’s just one problem: I lied to them.”
“How?”
“I told them that the night the guy at the hotel got shot, I brought in heroes and we watched television.”
“Why did you say that?”
“I thought if they knew you couldn’t have done that one, then they would leave you alone on all of them. There’s no way they could know I wasn’t here, right?”
Phelan knew this was a problem. He had told Andy Carpenter that he was at Patsy’s that night, and Carpenter would have told the cops. They’d know that Julie was lying, and they would think he might have put her up to it. Either way, they might come down hard on her for it.
“Julie, don’t lie to them anymore, okay? If they talk to you, tell them the truth.”
“You think they know I lied?”
He nodded. “Yes. You don’t know anything bad about me, right?”
“Right.”
“Then there’s no reason to lie. I can take care of myself.”
“Okay. If you say so.”
“I say so.” Then, “How come you never asked me if I was involved, you know, in what’s going on?”
“Because I know you’re not.”
He thought she was going to add, “are you?” but she didn’t. “Good. That’s my little girl.”
“I’m not your little girl anymore. I used to be, before you left. But now I’m not.”
“I know.”
“Dad, why don’t you let James help you? He has money, and he said he’d help you get started in some kind of business.”
James and Phelan really had never had a chance to establish any kind of relationship, but James had made the offer to help before, no doubt as a favor more to Julie than to him. “Thank you, James, but I don’t need any help. I’ll be fine. You can take care of Julie.”
“I can take care of myself, Dad. We have that in common.”
As Julie and James were preparing to leave, Julie said, “Give me a minute to talk to my dad alone, okay?”
James seemed fine with that and said, “Of course. I’ll be in the car.”
Once he was gone, she said, “Dad, we want to help in any way we can.”
“Thank you, honey. But I’m fine.”
“If you need to go someplace, for however long, James has a cabin you could use. It is in the middle of nowhere, north of here, in the woods, and it is in his brother’s name, so there is no reason anyone would ever find you there if you didn’t want to be found.”
Suddenly Danny was interested. “Maybe at some point I’ll take you up on that, depending on circumstance
s.”
“Good. It’s just sitting there unused. We wouldn’t tell anyone where you were.”
Once Julie left, Danny had time to think of the implications of the fact that the police had questioned Cynthia, his ex-wife. They hadn’t sought out Julie, but they no doubt would have if she hadn’t gone to them.
With all they had going on, the fact that they had found the time to conduct those two interviews meant that he was a key suspect in their eyes. If that was the case already, he knew that pressure would only increase once they found out more. And he knew they would find out much more.
Cynthia was a major problem. If she hadn’t already, she would tell them about his guns, and the fact that he had taken them from the house, even though as a felon he was prohibited from having them. Worse yet, she would tell them about the M4.
It was getting close to the time when he would have to disappear. At least now he knew where he could go.
“Of course I interviewed him. I interview every driver I hire.”
The interviewer that I’m talking to is Evan Meyer, who runs Meyer Trucking. It’s based in Clifton, and I’ve come to his office because this particular person that he interviewed is Danny Phelan. And after that, he hired him.
Meyer is going out of his way to show me how busy he is, to the point where he’s reading through papers on his desk while we’re talking.
“He was a driver for you?”
“Yes. I have a trucking company, and trucks need drivers.”
He’s still reading papers on his desk, which is getting on my nerves. My nerves are pretty easy to get on these days. “Those papers must be really important if you have to read them while we’re talking,” I say.
He looks up at me. “I’ve got a business to run. I’m in here at six o’clock in the morning, and I leave at eight o’clock at night, which means I have no life. All I have is this business. And once an employee leaves, I no longer give a shit about him. Okay?”
I smile. “No problem. While you’re running the business and reading those important papers, I’ll just call some friends of mine. Maybe you know them; they also are busy. They get in early, and they leave late. And what they do in the hours in between is check on trucks and buildings to make sure they are completely up to code, just for safety purposes.”
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