Black and Blue

by David Rosenfelt

  “Are you threatening me?” he asks.

  “Not a chance. You want to talk, or you want to read?”

  He thinks about his options for a moment, and then pushes the papers to the side of his desk. “I’ll talk.”

  “Good. When you hired Phelan, were you aware that he was a convicted felon, on drug charges?”

  “Yeah. He told me. But he was clean; we drug test all our drivers. And he’s a veteran; we only hire veterans.”

  “Are you a veteran?” I ask.

  “Damn straight.”

  “How many days of the week does he work?”

  “Now?” he asks. “None. He quit two weeks ago.”

  “Did he say why?”

  “No. Didn’t say anything. Just stopped showing up. Never even picked up his last check.”

  I stand up and give him my card. “If you hear from him, I want to know about it.” Then, “You can go back to your reading now.”

  The note was in my mailbox when I got home from work.

  This time I didn’t wait for morning; I brought it right down to the station to be examined. Once again I didn’t open it, and I touched it as little as possible.

  We’ve been through this often enough that I don’t expect we will find anything, but that doesn’t matter. Evidence is evidence, and there are ways to handle it.

  I call Nate and together we stand over Sergeant Ferrara in the forensics department as she opens the letter, having already confirmed that there are no useful prints on the outside of the envelope.

  She uses instruments to open it, then unfolds the note using the same instruments, which is basically a fancy, expensive pair of tweezers. She’s going to be examining the note carefully for DNA and prints, but first she allows us to read what it contains.

  Written in the same block letters, no doubt in ink from the same pen, it says:

  HAVE YOU FIGURED OUT WHO ELSE FELL OFF

  THE WALL YET? I’LL GIVE YOU A TINY HINT …

  THE BITCH’S NAME WAS HELEN MIZELL.

  I know that Nate has to be as stunned by this message as I am, but we leave without saying so, and we head straight for Captain Bradley’s office. On the off chance that he’s still here, we might as well have the conversation in front of him; no sense talking about it twice.

  I’m surprised to see that he is, in fact, still here; these are unusual times, even for a police captain. He ushers us right in; as detectives in charge of this investigation, we have priority status.

  “Doug just got another note,” Nate says. “The victim we couldn’t identify is Helen Mizell.”

  I know that Bradley has been keeping up with the filed reports as much as he can, but I can tell by his face that he’s drawing a blank on Helen Mizell. “I give up; who is Helen Mizell?”

  “She’s a woman that lived in a senior-living facility; Nate and I were over there and talked to the director. She was killed with one bullet near the heart, but it was a thirty-eight.”

  He nods. “I remember now; I read the report. Shit.”

  “Right. Now we have no common thread among the victims; they appear to be random. And we have no common weapon.”

  “But we do have the one shot through the heart,” Bradley says.

  “For now. If he’s willing to change the weapon, he could change the method. But I doubt it; he seems to like his safe distance.”

  “If it was a thirty-eight, it wasn’t that long a distance. No matter how good he is.”

  Nate says, “There could be other victims we don’t even know about. They could even be in other states; we cross-checked them all on the ballistics. Now that’s out the window.”

  “I don’t think so,” I say. “Our boy seems more than eager to claim credit. He was even afraid we’d miss this one, so he gave us the name. If he had any other conquests, I think he’d be rubbing our noses in it.”

  “How carefully did you look into the Mizell killing?” Bradley asks.

  I shrug. “Not very. We were just covering our bases. Like I said, we talked to the director of the place, but not to the other residents. The local cops had done that, and turned up nothing. The victim wasn’t even on the grounds when the shooting happened. She was walking into town.”

  “You want to send someone out there to conduct interviews?”

  “No, we’ll go. We’ll talk to everyone, and we’ll turn up the same nothing the local cops did.”

  “For the moment I don’t want to go public with this,” Bradley says. “At least not now. We don’t want to scare every old person in the state. If I thought it would reduce the danger, I would. People are already afraid to go out of their houses.”

  I agree with the decision, at least for the time being, and I say so, as does Nate.

  Bradley adds, “And who knows, maybe our boy didn’t do it, but is just claiming credit.”

  “No chance,” I say.

  Bradley nods. “Yeah, I know.”

  On the way out to the senior home, Nate says, “Listen, pal, much as I’d like to trade up when it comes to partners, I think you should take some precautions. Our boy seems preoccupied with you; it’s one small step from there to adding you to his list.”

  “I don’t think so. Communicating with me is part of his fun.”

  “He can switch to a different kind of fun just like he switched to a different weapon. All I’m saying is change your patterns.”

  “How so?”

  “Like don’t walk Jessie’s horse-dog around the neighborhood. Like keep your drapes closed. Like walk to the garage from the back of the house instead of the front. You’re a cop; you figure it out. Just do it.”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “You’ll think about it?” Nate asks. “You sure you want to make that big a commitment?”

  “I’m sure.”

  We arrive at the retirement community and surprise the director, Joyce Peterson, who didn’t expect to see us again. I can tell that’s the case because she says, “I didn’t expect to see you again.”

  “Just covering all our bases,” Nate says. “We’d like to talk to Helen Mizell’s closest friends, if they’re still here.” I’m just relieved that Nate said, “if they’re still here,” rather than “as long as they haven’t died of old age yet.”

  “Well, as I told you, she mostly kept to herself, but maybe you’d like to speak to her bridge partners?” Peterson asked.

  I nod. “That would be good.”

  So we spend most of the next two hours talking to Helen Mizell’s bridge partners, during which time we find out that she was an excellent bridge player.

  Now we’re making progress.

  “Did you tell them about the guns?” Julie asked.

  Her mother nodded. “Damn right I did. And they sent someone around with a picture of a rifle, and I said Danny sure as hell had one of those, even though I can’t tell one from the other.”

  “I’ll tell them that you’re lying.”

  “That’s Daddy’s little girl,” she says, mocking. “The only problem is, even though I hate the son of a bitch, I don’t really think he’s going around murdering people.”

  “You’re back to attacking him,” Julie said. “I think that’s funny.”

  “What’s so funny about it?”

  “Because while he was here, you couldn’t stand him, you made his life miserable. Then he left us, he left me and you, and all you did was want him back. Now he comes back, but not to you, and you hate him again. Make up your mind, Mom.”

  Cynthia didn’t want to argue; she was tired of arguing. “It’s complicated,” she said.

  “That’s always your fallback, Mom. It’s complicated. Well, you know what? It’s not that complicated. You’re either for him or against him. You’re either for me or against me. Black and white. It’s pretty easy when you boil it down to that.”

  “I was always there for you,” she says.

  That draws a laugh from Julie. “Yeah, right. Well, I can see we’re into the bullshit portion of
our conversation.”

  “Don’t talk to me like that.”

  “Why? Are you going to send me to my room? Goodbye, Mom.”

  “Julie…,” she said, but there was no use finishing the sentence, because Julie had already slammed the door behind her.

  There was nothing terribly unusual about the argument between Julie and Cynthia; Cynthia could remember countless conversations that had gone in the same direction, and ended the same way. This one was no different, nor would the next one be.

  It had all started when Danny walked out on them; nothing had ever been the same after that.

  So Cynthia did what she always did in situations like this; she put it behind her and just went about her business.

  In this case, part of doing her business meant cleaning up the house, doing the dishes, and then going outside to the mailbox to get the day’s mail. And she was doing exactly that when the bullet entered her heart.

  “We’ve got another victim, and the world has officially changed,” Nate says.

  “What do you mean? Who is it?”

  “Cynthia Morris, Danny Phelan’s ex-wife. Bullet through the heart as she walked to her mailbox.”

  I let the news sink in for a few moments, then say, “Well, that’s that.”

  “I’m heading to the scene now,” Nate says. “Meet me there?”

  “No. All we’re going to find is a dead woman lying in front of a mailbox with a hole in her chest. We can do that later. Right now we need to bring Phelan in.”

  Nate agrees, and we immediately call in a team to cordon off the block where Phelan lives, with another group of cops to be with us when we go in and get him. Technically right now we’re just bringing him in for questioning, but if we have to we’ll make it an official arrest. Either way, once we get our hands on him, we are not letting go.

  Once those arrangements are made, I call Bradley and update him on our plan, which he endorses. Then I briefly consider whether I should call Andy Carpenter once the cordon is established and give him the option of convincing his client to surrender peacefully. I decide against it. He’ll just tell me that we have the wrong guy, that when the murder was taking place, Phelan was delivering Meals on Wheels to the elderly.

  Bradley arranges for a warrant from a judge, just in case Phelan doesn’t welcome us into the house. It will only delay us a few minutes, I have no doubt that once the judge knows which case we’re working on, he is not about to jerk around with us.

  It’s getting dark, which in this case is probably a good thing, in that it will be harder for Phelan to see what is going on and track our movements. By the time Nate and I get there, the cordon is established, and the sergeant in charge assures us that no one has left that house or gotten through the barriers that have been set up on the streets.

  Nate and I, along with four heavily armed SWAT cops, plan to approach the house from various angles. But there are no lights on in the house; either Phelan has kept them off because he knows we’re coming, or he’s not home.

  We have devices which can measure heat sources within a structure; don’t ask me how they work, I just know they do. The SWAT team has them as part of their everyday equipment, and in this case they tell us that there is no human heat coming out of that house at all.

  If Phelan is in there, he’s dead.

  We take all of our normal precautions regardless as we approach the house, just in case the heat-finding machine is giving a false negative. I don’t want my headstone to read, “He wouldn’t be here if the damn heat-detecting machine had worked.”

  It’s not necessary for us to break down the front door because it’s unlocked. And sure enough, Phelan is nowhere to be found. I have a hunch he’s not just taking in a movie.

  I’m glad we have the warrant because it gives us the opportunity to take the place apart and look for anything that might possibly implicate him in these killings, or tell us where he might be.

  Tellingly, there is no computer, smartphone, or tablet to be found. Unless he is a resident of the dark ages, he took them with him. I also don’t see any suitcases, and drawers are emptied. This guy is not coming back.

  Now I do call Andy Carpenter. “Your client’s ex-wife just got herself a bullet in the heart,” I say. “Talk about your coincidences.”

  “Damn,” is his response.

  “Do you know where Phelan is? He seems to have evacuated his premises in something of a hurry.”

  “No idea,” he says. “But there’s an obvious, innocent explanation for all this.”

  “What might that be?”

  “Beats the shit out of me. But there is one.”

  “My suggestion is you get him to turn himself in.”

  “Thanks for sharing that, Lieutenant. I’ll take it under advisement.”

  Meanwhile Nate is on the phone with Bradley, suggesting an all-points bulletin be put out for Phelan. I have no doubt that Bradley will be all too delighted to do it, and to let the public know about it, since he has to announce another murder at the same time.

  I’m not sure if Bradley will publicly designate Phelan a “suspect” or a “person of interest.” My guess is the latter. The public response will be just as significant, and if by some miracle it turns out that Phelan is not the killer, the department will not have as much egg on its face as if it called Phelan a suspect, only to be proven wrong.

  I’m a little uncomfortable that we don’t have any concrete evidence of Phelan’s guilt, though if he has truly run, then that is certainly a significant factor. Also, Cynthia Morris’s killing had not been reported by the media at the point that her ex-husband had taken off—only next of kin would have been notified—so if that is what precipitated his doing so, then he had to have independent knowledge of it.

  Firing the shot is a foolproof way to get independent knowledge of a shooting.

  Nate and I are not necessarily the best choices to run an investigation like this.

  This role is very much about managing the army of cops at our disposal, reading their reports, directing their movements, and connecting the dots. But Nate and I like to be out in the field, which puts us temperamentally at odds with our assignment.

  So for the time being at least, we’re doing what we apparently did back when the original Brookings investigation was underway. We split up, with one of us out in the field and the other back at the station, pretending to be the boss. It’s a good compromise between what we want to do and what we have to do.

  Today it’s Nate’s turn to stay back, which is why I am going to talk to Julie Phelan. I would talk to her anyway, but now it’s even more important, since a neighbor commented that Julie was seen leaving her mother’s house about fifteen minutes before the shooting.

  I am surprised when I see where Julie lives; it’s in a fashionable neighborhood in Montclair. The house is owned by James McKinney, and one way or the other, he has clearly managed to give Julie an economic advantage that her parents never did.

  I had called in advance and spoken to McKinney. I asked about his relationship to Julie, and he described himself as her fiancé. When I told him I was coming over, he said that Julie was very upset about her mother’s death. If that was meant to dissuade me, it didn’t work, because here I am.

  McKinney opens the door for me as I approach and lets me in. We walk into the den, and he says, “Julie’s in her room. She’s pretty upset.”

  I guess he thought the “Julie is upset” approach would be more effective in person than it was over the phone. “Understandable,” I say. “I won’t take up much of her time.”

  He nods and leaves the room, hopefully to get her. When he comes back he says that she’s getting herself together and will be down in a little while. Then he mentions again how upset she is.

  The delay in her arrival unfortunately gives us ten long minutes to make small talk, which is among the kinds of talks I have no interest in. But he tries, talking about the Giants football season and the weather.

  I thin
k I’m supposed to keep up my end, so I ask him what he does for a living, and he tells me he’s a broker.

  I’ve actually got a fairly large amount of money, at least for me, because in the time after I was recognized as a hero for stopping a terrorist attack, and before I came back to the force, organizations paid me to do motivational speaking.

  I’m not sure how much motivating I did; most of the audience looked like they were having trouble keeping awake. But they paid me ridiculously well and seemed quite content to do it. It embarrassed me, but I was basically pleased to take the money.

  In any event, I’m not going to mention any of this to McKinney, since it is possible his broker’s eyes would light up. Instead I ask him, “How long have you and Julie been together?” That’s more than just small talk; it’s a way of trying to gauge how much he knows about Julie’s family, including her father.

  He smiles. “Depends on when you start the clock. We met at camp; she was at a girl’s camp, and I was at the boy’s camp next door. We were there for one year each, but we had a fling.” Another smile. “We snuck back and forth a lot, but we were fourteen, so I’m afraid it wasn’t close to a full-fledged fling. Then we didn’t see each other for years, but we reconnected a couple of years ago. Picked up where we left off.”

  Julie finally comes out, looking like she’s been crying and holding a crumpled-up tissue in her hand. A mother getting shot and a father occupying the position of key suspect in her murder and others will do that to a child.

  “I’ve been telling Lieutenant Brock about our time at summer camp.” James smiles when he says it, no doubt trying to lighten the mood.

  She’s clearly not into mood lightening, so she just stares at him without responding. Then she turns to me and manages a hello and sits down across from me, in effect giving me the floor. “I’m sorry about your mother,” I say.

  She nods. “Thank you.”