by Lois Winston
I’d initially thought the same thing, but I’d also come up with an explanation. “Unless she told someone else about our conversation on Friday with her cousin.”
“Did she?”
I placed a cup of steaming coffee in front of him. “I don’t know. She never mentioned speaking with anyone else, but that doesn’t mean she didn’t.” And if she did, perhaps that person told others. Dozens of people might now know that Lupe was investigating what had happened to her mother as a young teen, and one of them might have a reason for silencing her.
Spader scrubbed at the stubble covering his jaw, his mouth set in a deep grimace. “If she did tell someone, that person’s name is trapped inside the brain of a woman in a deep coma.”
He leaned back in his chair and nursed his coffee, his expression thoughtful. Finally, he said, “Those former football players would have the most to lose if one of them found out Mrs. Betancourt was digging up old secrets. I don’t suppose you have their names.”
I shook my head. “It shouldn’t be hard to figure out who they are, though. Lupe said there were only five seniors on the team that year. She also mentioned I’d recognize some of their names.”
Spader placed his drained cup on the table and stood. “I’ll look into it. Maybe we’ll get lucky and discover one of them owns a panel van with front-end damage.”
“Is it ever that easy?” I asked as I walked him to the door.
He snorted. “In all my years on the job? Occasionally a perp is so stupid that the case pretty much solves itself, but it doesn’t happen very often. The worst are the cold cases, the ones that never get solved. There are far too many of them.”
That last thought darkened his expression. Spader was a good cop who didn’t like to lose. One unsolved case was one too many. I knew he wouldn’t rest until he found the guy who’d run down Lupe and the two other women. He reached for the doorknob.
Before stepping outside, he turned to me and said, “Do me a favor, Mrs. Pollack.”
“Sure.”
“Stay out of trouble.”
And here I thought he was about to ask for my help. I tamped down the urge to reply with a salute and an “aye, aye.”
~*~
Detective Spader called the next afternoon. “Looks like there’s no connection between the two incidents yesterday. A navy panel van caused the accident on Rt. 22. The hit-and-run in Westfield involved a white panel van.”
“What about the football players?” I asked.
“We did a little behind-the-scenes investigating so as not to tip our hand, just in case your theory had some serious teeth.”
“Did it?”
“Turns out four of the guys had alibis for yesterday during the two incidents.”
“And the fifth?”
“He died less than a year after he graduated high school.”
“How?”
“Drug overdose.”
Had he turned to drugs to deal with a guilty conscience? Then again, if you believed the books, movies, and music that came out of the sixties, a huge number of teens and young adults took part in the drug culture back then. “None of the four own a panel van?”
“Negative. We found the vans abandoned. Both had previously been reported stolen.”
“Were they discovered near each other?”
“Miles apart. The blue van was found parked next to a vacant warehouse in Secaucus. The white van was abandoned behind the Walmart in Union.”
“What about fingerprints?”
“Wiped clean.”
“Are car thieves usually that smart?”
“The ones who don’t want to get caught are.”
“So you have no clue as to who mowed down Lupe and the other two women?”
“It’s early in the investigation, but with the involvement of two separate vehicles, it seems obvious there’s no connection between the two incidents.”
“Which means you believe the person responsible for the hit-and-run didn’t deliberately try to kill Lupe?”
I heard Spader heave a deep sigh before he answered. “All I can say at this point, Mrs. Pollack, is that I don’t see how the hit-and-run connects to a fifty-year-old rape. That doesn’t mean the driver wasn’t bent on harming Lupe for some other reason or had targeted one of the other two women. We just don’t know yet. However, in my experience these cases are rarely premeditated.”
“Meaning?”
“The driver is usually intoxicated or on his phone and not paying attention. Once he hits someone, he panics and takes off, especially if he’s driving a stolen vehicle. Most likely Mrs. Betancourt and the others were just in the wrong place at the wrong time yesterday.”
Maybe. Or maybe not. My guilt over Carmen’s death had now led to Lupe’s injuries. And what if Lupe didn’t survive? I owed it to her to dig a little deeper. Perhaps Spader and his fellow detectives had overlooked something. “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to share the names of the former football players with me, would you?”
“Not a chance, Mrs. Pollack. You keep your nose clean on this one. Let us do the work we’re trained to do.”
“But you have no leads.”
“I never said we have no leads; I said the members of the football team aren’t suspects in the hit-and-run.”
“But—”
“We’ll catch the creep.”
“How?”
Annoyance seeped into his reply. “I don’t have time for this, Mrs. Pollack. I’ve already wasted too many hours on a dead end.” With that he hung up.
I buried my head in my hands. Spader’s confidence that he’d crack the case did little to assure me. After all, the man had sat at my kitchen table last night, bemoaning numerous unsolved crimes. What made him so certain he’d solve this one?
“You okay?”
I turned to find Cloris, a bakery box in her hands, standing in the entrance to my cubicle. I shook my head. “Not really.”
She flipped open the lid to reveal half a dozen iced brownies. “Everything is always better with chocolate and booze.”
I helped myself to one of the brownies. “Booze?”
“Remember that gourmet bakery that made adult-only cupcakes infused with liqueurs?”
“How could I forget hundred-proof cupcakes?”
“They’ve expanded their repertoire to include brownies.”
I took a bite. A marriage of chocolate and Chambord exploded on my taste buds. “Tell me we don’t have to share these with anyone else.”
“Share what?” Cloris winked. She closed the box and placed it on my counter. “I’m going to the break room to grab coffee for us. Don’t scarf down all of these while I’m gone. I’ve got dibs on half of them.”
She returned a minute later with two steaming cups of coffee. After grabbing a brownie and taking a bite, she settled into the spare chair in my cubicle and asked, “What’s going on?”
Cloris had been out of the office all morning. I hadn’t had a chance to tell her about Patricia’s suggestion that she and Gregg hire a private investigator or about the hit-and-run. I started with the easier news—the information that affected her.
“One thing I’ve learned about high-priced attorneys,” she said, “they keep PI’s on retainer. Someone is already snooping around the trolls. Hopefully he’ll find something incriminating, but that can’t be why you look like someone pulled the feathers off your parrot. What’s going on?”
I inhaled a deep breath of courage before telling her about the hit-and-run.
She nearly choked on a mouthful of brownie. “My God! Will Lupe survive?”
“I don’t know, but even if she does, she may have extensive brain damage. And it’s all my fault.”
Cloris gaped at me, her jaw hanging open, her eyes bugging out. “Wait! I’m confused. Were you the driver?”
“Of course not! How could you think such a thing?”
“Maybe because you said it’s your fault? How the heck are you responsible for Lupe’s injuries?”
“It all started with Cynthia’s death. If I had accepted the initial police report, Lawrence wouldn’t have orchestrated the murders on my street to keep me from discovering the truth. Carmen would still be alive. Which means Lupe wouldn’t have found the suitcase of photographs, and I wouldn’t have discovered the letter about Carmen’s secret baby.”
“Whoa! What secret baby?”
Cloris had been so wrapped up in her own problems that I realized I had never told her about the suitcase of photos and all that had transpired after I found the letter addressed to Lupe. I quickly caught her up.
“Don’t you see, Elena telling us about the rape set Lupe off on a quest to discover her mother’s rapist.” I took a deep breath. “I set the first domino in motion. None of the other events would have taken place otherwise.”
Cloris rolled her eyes. “And if Fidel Castro had been a better baseball player, the Yankees would have signed him, and there never would have been a Cuban Revolution, the Bay of Pigs, or the Cuban Missile Crisis. And maybe JFK wouldn’t have been assassinated.”
I reached for another brownie. “I hate to break it to you, but that story about Castro and the Yankees is a myth. Good try, though.”
“So how about this: if Gregg and I had turned down that offer on our house and sold to some other couple, we wouldn’t now be dealing with a spurious lawsuit.”
I stared at her over the rim of my coffee cup. “Your point?”
“You can’t live your life second-guessing every decision you make. It serves no purpose other than to drive you crazy.”
“Welcome to Team Zack. He keeps trying to tell me the same thing.”
“Smart guy. You should listen to him. Besides,” she continued, “didn’t you say your detective friend found no connection between the rape suspects and the hit-and-run?”
“He said they all had alibis for yesterday. There’s a difference.” If I’d learned one thing from living my entire life in New Jersey, it’s that for the right price alibis are always for sale. Just ask any member of organized crime.
“Why do I get the sneaking suspicion you’re planning an investigation of your own?”
Was I? I suppose the idea had lurked in the back of my mind from the beginning, even though I’d claimed I didn’t want to get involved in Lupe’s family drama. However, that was before she wound up in a coma. Now I owed it to her to find her mother’s rapist. “Maybe the hit-and-run has nothing to do with a decades’ old sexual assault, but someone has to uncover the truth.”
“Seems to me I also remember you saying the detective told you to leave the detecting to him.”
“Of the hit-and-run. Not the rape.”
“Okay, Sherlock, let’s say you discover who raped Carmen. Then what?”
What, indeed? Wasn’t that the question I’d posed to Lupe? And hadn’t Elena and I explained to her the futility of pursuing the truth? But Lupe had insisted she needed closure. At least if I uncovered the identity of the rapist, I could provide her with that—if she ever woke up.
~*~
On my way home from work I stopped at the hospital to see if Lupe’s condition had improved. Elena and I met at the entrance to the hospital. A late November wind whipped around us as I asked, “How is she?”
Elena hugged her arms around her body and shook her head. “No improvement so far.”
I shook my head in sympathy. “I’m so sorry.” Then I added, “I’m glad I ran into you, Elena. I need to speak with you about something.”
Her eyes grew wary. “Yes?”
Initially I hadn’t wanted to tell Elena about Lupe’s trip to Our Lady of Peace. I didn’t want her blaming herself for Lupe’s injuries. That was yesterday. Today everything had changed. I inhaled an icy breath of courage, then on a rush of air told her Lupe had discovered the names of the football players hours before the hit-and-run. “I think someone may have targeted Lupe.”
Even if Spader saw no connection, one still might exist. Getting Elena to cough up those names would save me countless hours of searching, especially since I’d ruled out my own visit to Our Lady of Peace to check the yearbook.
Although remote, the possibility existed of a link between the school and the driver of the blue panel van. I needed to employ extreme stealth sleuthing to remain totally anonymous throughout any investigating I undertook.
Elena’s response shocked me. Her eyes narrowed, and she spoke through gritted teeth. “Stay out of this, Anastasia.”
I took a step back. “But—”
“I never should have told you and Lupe anything about that night.”
“I need those names, Elena.”
“What difference could knowing the names possibly make now?”
“Lupe needs closure.”
“Closure? She’s in a coma.”
“When she comes out of the coma.”
“Forget it. You won’t get those names from me.”
“Why not? Think of Lupe.”
“I am thinking of her. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get home to fix dinner for my mother.” She pushed me aside and hurried toward the parking garage.
I stared after her. Elena’s hostile attitude told me my theory wasn’t so far-fetched. No matter what Spader believed, I was now convinced someone had tried to stop Lupe from uncovering the truth. Elena was spooked. If I found the person she feared, I’d find the rapist.
I entered the hospital and made my way up to the intensive care unit. Andrew once again sat beside his comatose wife, his hands cupping one of hers as he spoke to her. He looked even worse than he had last night. I doubt he’d slept. He certainly hadn’t shaved.
I stood on the other side of the glass, waiting for him to notice me. When he finally glanced my way, he rose and met me in the hallway.
“It’s so good of you to come again, Anastasia. I’ve told Lupe you came last night. The doctors said I should talk to her as much as possible. It might help her come out of the coma.”
“I’ve heard that.”
He sighed. “I have no idea whether or not she can really hear me. Part of me thinks it’s a myth.”
“A myth?”
“One the hospital staff perpetrates to keep family members occupied and feeling useful.” He shrugged. Tears filled his eyes. “Who knows? If there’s the remotest possibility of it helping, I’ll talk until I lose my voice.”
“Andrew, did Lupe mention anything about the two of us visiting Elena last Friday?”
He nodded. “She told me what she learned about her mother, if that’s what you mean.”
“Did you know she wanted to hunt down the men involved?”
He ran both hands through his already unruly hair. “I tried to talk her out of it.”
“As did I, but she didn’t listen to either of us.”
“What do you mean?”
“You didn’t tell anyone about what happened to Carmen and Elena, did you?”
“Of course not. What’s this all about?”
“Lupe discovered the football players’ names shortly before the hit-and-run.”
The color drained from Andrew’s face. “You don’t think someone deliberately tried to kill her, do you?”
“I don’t know. I talked to one of the detectives on the case. He thinks it’s a coincidence.”
“What if it’s not?”
“Exactly.”
“Do you know the names?”
“I don’t, and both the detective and Elena refuse to divulge them to me.”
“I can understand the detective not sharing but Elena?”
“She’s afraid of something. Or someone.”
“What do you need from me?”
“I suspect Lupe wrote down the names.”
“Her purse and clothes are still here. I’ve been hoping she’d wake up soon, and I’d be able to bring her home. Wait here.”
Andrew stepped back into Lupe’s room. I watched from the other side of the glass as he pulled her purse from the closet. He returned to wh
ere I waited and together we looked through it but found nothing.
“What about her phone?” I asked. “Does she take notes on it?”
He fished her phone from the side pocket of her purse, turned it on, and tapped on the Notes app. “Nothing,” he said, scrolling down the titles of the various notes Lupe had made.
I thought of one last place we could search. “Pockets?”
Andrew returned to the room. A moment later I saw him pull a folded piece of paper from Lupe’s coat pocket. He opened it and stared at the page. The color drained from his face.
TWELVE
Andrew returned to the hallway and with a shaking hand, passed me the creased sheet of paper, a photocopy of a yearbook page. A large picture of the entire football team filled the top half of the page. Below that were five small individual photos of the senior members of the team. I read each of the names and recognized four of them. I now knew why both Detective Spader and Elena had refused to share the names with me and why Andrew now looked like a sickly ghost.
“These have to be the boys from the party,” I said. “According to Elena, the five boys at the party were all seniors and all football players.”
Andrew turned his head to focus on his wife as he spoke. “Four of them are very powerful, well respected men.”
I studied the photos of the boys posing in their football uniforms. “With an enormous skeleton in each of their closets.”
Peter Donatello was a high-powered defense attorney who practiced in New York and New Jersey. He specialized in white-collar crime and had amassed an extremely high acquittal rate throughout his long career. Could he be the rapist? Had he orchestrated the hit-and-run? A man with crooks for clients had certain connections, but Peter Donatello only handled insider trading and embezzlement cases, not mob-related crimes where someone might know a guy who knew a guy who could make a problem disappear without leaving a trace.
Albert Owens had inherited his slumlord father’s real estate empire back in the nineties. First, he kicked out the welfare tenants, druggies, and squatters. Then he tore down the rat-infested, dilapidated buildings. In their place he erected million-dollar high-rise condos along the Jersey side of the Hudson River, transforming worn down, blue-collar neighborhoods and slums into a gentrified urban paradise with spectacular views of the Manhattan skyline.