“How?” I ask, wondering how Wayne pulled it off.
“Wayne told me he swiped the last bottle from Salty’s, knowing Paddy would need to order one for the weekend. He figured you would check with Rusty’s to see who had purchased a Jack Daniel’s recently.”
“He was right,” I add. “Good timing for Wayne, bad for Paddy. And the rat poison?” I ask. “How did he manage to sneak it into Paddy’s office?”
Jackie frowns. “He was in the bar waiting for Paddy to go out for a smoke break.” Jackie stops, gives me a thin smile. “He said he almost got caught when Paddy decided to cut his break short.”
“I can only imagine Wayne stammering his way out of that one,” I say, knowing Wayne doesn’t generally think things through. But apparently, he planned and executed Hunter’s demise without a hitch. All in the name of love.
In light of Jackie’s history of holding back on me, I play into her emotional condition and ask if she has anything else I should know about. I’m hoping she’ll explain how Sheryl and Susan’s paintings were snatched from the house or how Paddy planned Sheryl’s murder. But her silence disappoints me. Instead, she offers a look of contrition and says, “I’m willing to pay for my sins, Hank. But you have to believe me. I never meant to hurt John.”
I nod, wondering if I can finally believe Jackie Hopkins.
While Wayne is laid out at Wollinsky’s Funeral Home, I’m at my desk leaning back in my chair observing a group of townsfolk anxiously milling around on Main Street. The town has been the subject of much talk lately. Vultures from major newspapers and prime time television have converged on Eastpoint with impunity and without decency, trying to get a glimpse of the freaks. Imagine if they knew about Hunter’s infamous artwork! At this point, I see no reason to display the paintings. John Hunter’s killer is dead, so what’s the point in further humiliating an already devastated town?
I’m trying hard to believe Jackie’s story. Maybe Wayne naively thought the rat poison wouldn’t kill Hunter. Or if he knew, he never got around to telling Jackie. Either way, by making Jackie his accomplice, Wayne added fuel to the blackmail equation. As for Jackie killing Wayne, I can’t read her mind. I’m not sure she can, either.
My eyes shift to the neon lights blinking from Rusty’s Spirits, and I think about Paddy, who is alive and fighting for his life. The judge and Dorothy have been by his side ever since the paramedics delivered him to Riverhead General yesterday. A cop and a fighter, that Paddy.
My private line lights up, so I figure it must be the hospital. It turns out to be a detective from the First Precinct in Manhattan. A guy by the name of Greco tells me he thinks they found Carol Warner, a.k.a. Carol Hunter. She’s alive but out of it. And scared.
Right. Scared ever since she clubbed me over the head in Hunter’s boudoir.
“They found her clutching papers and a few photographs,” Greco informs me. “After piecing things together, we discovered that there was an APB out on her. Your name was associated with it.”
“Thanks.” Although my investigation is pretty much over, with the surfacing of the judge’s .25-caliber revolver, which is now being tested, I figure since Greco was kind enough to call, I’d listen. I ask him if they found paintings. Greco claims Warner wasn’t carrying any at the time, but he’s quick to point out that she might have been walking around with paintings at some point. After all, Carol Warner was picked up in New York City. He laughs, then asks, “They worth anything?”
“Probably not.”
“She appeared homeless,” he says. “A patrol car stopped her near Battery Park. She was having a helluva conversation with herself.” Greco laughs again. A happy-go-lucky guy, this Greco. “We haven’t been able to get through to her and don’t know where she lives or if she has any relatives.”
“No identification?”
“None, except for the papers she was holding. Her name was on some of them.”
“Can I interrogate her?”
Greco regales me with more laughter. “You’ll get about as much out of her as you would a moth, but if you want to make an ID, be my guest. You’ll probably want to read the stuff she had on her, anyway.”
“Where is she now?”
“Bellevue. She’s undergoing a battery of tests as we speak.”
“I can be there in a few hours.”
“Believe me, she’s not going anywhere. Ask for me at the front desk.”
I hang up, lock my office door, and tell Kate I’m driving to the Big Apple. I ask her to say an extra prayer for Wayne. I’ve already said goodbye, but an extra prayer won’t hurt. Then I duck out the back door, eluding the press vultures.
I enter the Midtown Tunnel and think of Maggie. She’s just outside Eastpoint, waiting for me and I’m in her neighborhood getting ready to ID her phony sister-in-law.
I arrive at Bellevue Hospital and ask the receptionist where I can find Detective Greco.
A young African-American woman smiles and tells me J.R. is in Room 212.
J.R., not Detective Greco. He must be a regular.
There’s only one guy in Room 212, and he’s sitting on a metal chair reading the New York Times financial section. “Greco?”
He glances up from the paper. “That’s me. You Hank Reed?”
“Hi.”
He tosses the paper aside, then stands up and extends his hand. Greco’s got a good grip; he shakes my hand with exuberance. “Have a seat.”
“Thanks, but I’d rather stand for a while. I’ve been sitting in my car for over two hours.”
Greco and I share a few pleasantries and some detective stories. We’re about the same height, but that’s where the similarity ends. Greco is broad-shouldered, with a goatee and a crisp military crew cut. He’s casually dressed in a pair of Dockers and a heavy sweatshirt that reads “Sex Academy.” I asked him if he attended.
“Head of my class,” he smiles.
The sparse gray room has a long steel desk and three chairs and appears to be an interview area. I’m wondering if Carol Warner was brought in here.
“Warner is pretty fucked up. Incoherent,” Greco says, his tone neutral. “I don’t have a clue when you’ll be able to interrogate her, but at least you can make an ID.”
“Yeah, I’d like to. I’m very interested in the stuff she was carrying around with her.”
“Sure. It’s in the desk,” he says, motioning to the drawer on my side.
I stretch my arms in the air, then bend my body, attempting to touch my boots, which I haven’t done in years. I fold myself into a chair, open the drawer, and remove a part of Hunter’s past, which includes a few old pictures of my favorite shrink. He looked much younger back then. And alive. I sift through the rest of the pile and come across a few love letters that Warner had written to him. The same sick verbiage is found in every letter. I suspect Hunter hid them somewhere in his bookcase. These could have been what Sheryl was referring to. Something I might want to find before anyone else does, she told me.
I shake my head, wondering why Hunter would keep these sick letters around. Unless he thought Warner might track him down in Eastpoint, where he would threaten to go to the authorities again. They must have been the mementos she was eager to find.
“Interesting reading?” Greco asks.
I nod without glancing up. “Carol Warner was certainly delusional. Thought she and Hunter would find happiness together. Too bad she got mixed up with a guy with such a lustful appetite and empty promises.”
“I gather she and Hunter were a couple.”
I glance over at him. “At one time. Though in her mind, she still believed he was still interested.”
“She needed a shrink,” Greco says.
I laugh quietly. “He was her shrink.”
Greco chuckles.
“Hunter seduced her and paid dearly for it. He wound up losing his license. I guess he didn’t realize what he was getting himself into.” I pause. “Funny, don’t you think?”
“What’s that?”
“As her shrink, he should have known how delicate and sick she was from their sessions.”
He shrugs. “That’s the seduction. He was probably on the edge himself.”
I raise an eyebrow. “You study this stuff?”
Greco points to his shirt and smiles. “Told you I was the head of my class.”
I match his smile. “Apparently, Warner wouldn’t take no for an answer until she received the restraining order, but my guess is Hunter feared she would never stop stalking him. That’s when he moved out of the city and disappeared into the Eastpoint landscape.” I shrug. “She obviously found him.”
“She kill him?”
“No, my deputy did.”
Greco screws up his face. “Hunter was dipping into your deputy’s wife?”
“Nothing like that,” I assure him. “My deputy was delusional, too. It’s a long story.”
“Hunter was gay?”
I laugh. “If he was, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. It was more like a love triangle, once removed, since my deputy really wasn’t a part of it—the love part, that is.”
He shakes his head. “Helluva town you live in.”
“Yeah, I’ve been told that before. It was great before Hunter moved in. Did I mention he was from New York City?”
Greco smiles. “You sound protective of your little town.”
“I’ve lived there my whole life, know just about everyone. The deputy and I were good friends.”
He nods sympathetically. “You’re lucky. I don’t know any of my neighbors, and I’ve been living in the same Manhattan apartment for the past five years.”
I shake my head. “Too bad.”
“Nah, I like it that way. Nobody knows my business, and I don’t know theirs. It’s a matter of what you’re used to. I wouldn’t know if a serial killer lived next door to me.”
I smile thinly. “Sometimes I think living anonymously might not be so bad.”
“Try it.”
I think of Maggie living alone in the city. “Maybe I’ll hang out a while. See if I fit in.”
“You do that, Hank. You might never go back east.”
I like Greco. He has an easy demeanor, doesn’t take life too seriously. “I guess I better finish reading these love letters.”
“You go ahead,” he says, snatching the newspaper. “I was just trying to figure out where the market was heading when you arrived. You follow it?”
“Only my grocer’s produce prices.”
“You’re smart. I’m losing my ass,” he says and disappears behind the paper.
I pick up a black, leather-bound book and start reading. It was Hunter’s daybook, his professional diary. I hadn’t seen this one at his house.
Greco must be reading my face in between stock quotes. “Find something?”
“Plenty.”
“You look like you can use some coffee.”
I meet his eyes. “You read my mind.”
After Greco leaves, I place the journal down and rub my eyes. Unlike Hunter’s World, this diary was used for Hunter’s therapy sessions. He’d scribble sound bites, memory joggers. I search for interesting sessions and stop when Susan’s name crosses the page. Hunter wrote about us, our predicament, which Susan must have discussed with him. He mentions her overwhelming desire to have a child, the depression, and me. She wanted my baby, and her clock was about to stop, which only intensified her depression.
I glimpse the bare walls. He really was her shrink. Though Hunter lost his license back in New York City, he must have decided to help Susan as a friend to me. He was trying to get Susan off the antidepressants and suggested I get involved in their therapy sessions, which she refused. Apparently, Susan felt I wouldn’t be receptive, especially since I was the problem. Ouch!
Hunter then suggested I join them in a session. A family thing. But Susan refused again, suggesting that since Hunter and I were friends, he wouldn’t be objective. He then recommended another therapist, but Susan decided against that, too.
It appears they had a number of sessions, some productive. At the end of one, Hunter scribbled a footnote. It was a general comment, nothing specific to Susan’s issues. He seemed to be directing his own foibles in a positive way. These therapy sessions felt good, pure, and he didn’t want to spoil the moment. Not like the past. I assume he meant his disastrous experience with Carol Warner. He wrote, “I am no longer going to compromise my position as a healer and facilitator of this process. While Susan Reed is a beautiful woman, very desirable, and vulnerable, she is also sacrosanct. Hank is a good friend. I’ll leave my desires to my writings, paintings and…”
The and probably referred to his other Eastpoint women.
I close the journal, place it on the table, and close my eyes. I was wrong about Hunter. And Susan. My wife was pregnant with my child. All those accusations: the affair, the pregnancy, the murder. Then I think of Maggie. She must be told of this…mistake.
I open the journal again and flip through a few pages, searching for Hunter’s comments from Susan’s last session, stopping when my eyes come across a rather strange notation. It was written a few days before his murder, soon after Susan’s session. His handwriting was quick, nervous. “She wants to come and see me, will drive out for the day. She still doesn’t get it after all these years. Poor sick woman. I should have realized it during therapy.”
Carol Warner had finally found Hunter and was driving out to him. Had she seen Hunter with Jackie, Sheryl, or Susan? That would have enraged her. I slow down, catch my thoughts. Can’t be. Wayne killed Hunter.
Greco returns with my coffee and asks how I’m doing.
“If you were going to rent a car in the city, where would you go?”
Greco thinks a minute. “Hell, there’s gotta be dozens of car rental agencies. Why?”
“I’m trying to tie up some loose ends. Can you help me cut through some red tape?”
He smiles. “You’ll owe me big-time for it.”
“You like apples?”
“Sure.”
“How about I bring you a bushel next time I come into the Big Apple?”
“Funny. How about inviting me out during apple picking next season?” Greco beams.
“You’re on. I’ll throw in some peaches and strawberries.”
“Deal. What do you want me to check out?”
I tell Greco what I found out about Carol Warner.
“No problemo. I’ll start with the major car companies.” Greco moves to leave.
“Wait. She might have rented it under the name Carol Hunter, using a phony driver’s license.”
“I’ll check both.”
I glance at my watch. “How soon can you get back to me?”
He gives me a look. “I thought you said you wanted a touchy-feely of the city.”
I hold up Hunter’s journal. “That was before I read this.”
“Okay, but if you should change your mind, there’s always the academy. I got connections.” He smiles.
“I hope I don’t have to,” I tell him. “In the meantime, I’ll ID Warner, if that’s okay.”
He laughs. “Sure. She could use the company.”
Twenty-One
Detective Jose Greco comes through in fifty-five minutes, thirty-two seconds. He tells me that the Avis on Seventy-sixth Street rented a car to a Hunter three times over the past month. Only they didn’t rent it to Carol Warner or Hunter. Avis’ records showed that a Margaret Hunter, residing on Amsterdam Avenue, rented a Black Ford Focus, the first time, the day of Hunter’s murder. Records show that Maggie drove approximately two hundred miles for the first two trips, enough to get to Eastpoint and back with a few miles to spare. Greco informs me that she rented another black Focus a few days ago and hasn’t returned it yet.
Maggie lied to me. She told me she didn’t drive. She drives, all right. And possesses a New York State license. I’m wondering what else she possesses.
In Greco’s unmarked car, I’m thinking ab
out the journal Carol Warner was clutching when the cops picked her up. John Hunter wrote that she wanted to see him. “She still doesn’t get it after all these years. Poor sick woman. I should have realized it during her therapy.” Could Hunter have been referring to Maggie? Was she his patient before they were married?
Greco’s car is struggling through snarled traffic.
“How can anyone get around this city with all those cabs blanketing the streets?” I complain.
“Hey, they’re just trying to earn a living,” Greco defends.
“And all those people. I can see how Carol Warner got lost here. Anyone can.”
Greco laughs. “I guess the city is not in your blood, Hank.”
“Sorry. I’m just anxious to get there.”
Greco removes a siren from under his seat and sticks it on the roof of the car. It wails, and we start moving. “That better?” he asks as a sea of yellow taxis part in the street in front of us.
“Thanks. And thanks for getting a judge to sign the warrant on such short notice.”
“I expect you’ll throw in a vegetable stand when I retire from the force,” he says, chortling.
I try to share in his levity, but my laugh is flat.
Maggie’s apartment building is a prewar brick-and-mortar vintage. The lobby is adorned with two leather sofas, imported marble floors, an antique chandelier, and a sleek wooden desk, behind which a guy old enough to have retired three times is sitting and entertaining himself with a crossword puzzle.
“Hello.”
The guy recoils and is about to challenge us when Greco whips out his shield.
“What can I do for you, Detective?” He squints.
“You the doorman?”
“I do everything around here,” he says, lifting himself out of the chair. He strains to study the yellow and blue insignia on my jacket sleeve. “Where’s Eastpoint?”
I tell him it’s next to heaven. Then I tell him I need to get into Maggie Hunter’s apartment.
He eyes my sleeve again and says, “You’re not NYPD.”
The guy can read. “I still need to get into her apartment.”
The Art of Murder (A Hank Reed Mystery, Book 1) Page 19