by Triss Stein
I thought that all teens seem furtive. And yet, I wondered. I thought I might mention it to Torres. We said goodbye, and Dr. Kingston and I walked on to the street.
“I go this way, for my bus.”
I thanked him as warmly as I could. I had liked him from our first meeting.
At home I collapsed in bed. A night of sleep, the comfort of a shoulder next to me, a cool room as the outdoor temperature was dropping toward late fall. That calm and energy from a long sleep lasted about five minutes in the morning. Before the day truly began, Leary called.
“You still looking at Brooklyn Heights?”
“Good morning to you, too. You woke me up.”
“So? I have news. A body was found this morning in one of those Watchtower tunnels.”
“What? Say that again! Are you sure?” He still had connections, still followed police news.
“You heard me. Early this morning. It might be on the news by now. But are you sitting down?”
“I am now.”
“Dead man is a Witness bigwig by the name of Daniel Towns.”
Chapter Thirteen
I couldn’t help myself. Not that I tried very hard. I checked my calendar. No appointments today. I called in sick. Would I get into trouble? Did I care?
I didn’t know what I had in mind. Those who say I’m too impulsive might have a point. Sometimes. Today? I felt attached to this street I had spent too much time studying. I could hear my stern dissertation adviser pointing out how wrong that was, that detachment was the only proper stance for a serious scholar.
“So what?” I answered back. Before I was a scholar, I was a Brooklyn girl. Detachment isn’t our style.
As soon as I turned the corner onto Louisa’s street, I could see the flock of NYPD cars two blocks away. An ambulance was slowly driving away, silent and dark. I guessed it was too late for screaming sirens and flashing lights.
The sidewalk was closed off by glaring yellow emergency tape blocking the entrance to the Witnesses dorm and the area all around it. People in uniform were picking up gear. This was cleanup. If there had been crowds earlier, bustling with excitement and curiosity, that was over now.
Not for me. I had been invited, right? That’s what I told myself. I was, somehow, helping the NYPD. It was official. I knew “sort of” belonged in that sentence, but as I approached the scene, I refused to consider it. I was going with the idea that it was okay for me to be there.
But there were still a few cameramen around and a camera-ready local reporter. And Torres appeared. She didn’t look happy.
She confirmed that Daniel Towns’s body had been found in a Watchtower tunnel, but refused to speculate on how or why it was there. When the reporter stated the assumption that police presence meant the death was not natural, she nodded, but barely. She refused to speculate about cause of death, about a connection to the recent fire, or about any other question she was asked. She sounded terse, impatient, and stunningly uninformative. Now the reporter looked unhappy.
Torres was a master of the stonewall. I was impressed in spite of my frustration.
As I approached, a team in uniform was moving the tape to create a path for people to enter and leave the building. Torres was talking with a group of men in suits and gesturing firmly. Someone in a smart suit and stylish hair looked like he was trying to argue, and then Torres made it clear, with a chopping hand motion, that she was not accepting it. He didn’t look like a Witness.
I wished I could get near enough to hear but guessed, when she pointed to the yellow tape, that it was related to access. When she looked up she made a small gesture, an acknowledgment she had seen me. As the men dispersed, she waved me over.
“As you see, I’m busy.” She was scanning the scene in front of us even as she was talking to me. “Do you have any news for me?”
“I, uh, yes. Maybe.” I handed her a folder. “I don’t know if it is useful, though. It’s all background.”
She took it without looking and passed it to a nearby cop without looking. “Take it over to my bag.” She hadn’t turned to me. “That’s it?”
She turned away to respond to the mic on her shoulder.
I had no place there. What a dope I was being to think I did. I should just leave, but before I did, I’d ring Louisa’s doorbell. Just in case. In case someone was home finishing up the renovation. In case someone would talk to me. In case someone had news of Louisa.
Sierra opened the door a thin crack, saw that it was me, and let me in. “I am guarding against reporters.” She had tears in her eyes. “They are already harassing Louisa.” She put a finger to her lips and pointed. Louisa sat in the parlor with someone I recognized from the precinct. Torres’s assistant?
She looked at me with a silent nod, and I went in.
I was disturbed to see Louisa looking extremely fragile. The detective looked determined and frustrated. Yeah, Louisa could have that effect on people.
“Hello, Detective…is it Kahn?” I sounded confident, but I was faking it. “We met when Louisa had her handwriting tested. How nice to see you again.” I was aiming for convincing dishonesty. I thought Louisa needed a friend right now.
“Providing moral support again?” He didn’t sound happy to see me. I didn’t answer, just took a seat and put a friendly hand over Louisa’s trembling one.
“I could ask you to leave.” He sighed, a fed-up sound, and let it go.
“You’re only asking me all these questions because I’m an easy target. Old and alone.” Louisa squeezed my hand.
“Not nearly as alone as I would like. And, hell no, it’s not because you are old. It’s because you and the deceased were having a very public argument, a feud, and we need to know where you were last night.”
“Why is that?”
She looked at him steadily, arms folded, mouth set, but I thought there was something else in her expression. Sierra, standing in the parlor door, where I could see her but Kahn could not, shook her head.
Kahn let out another exasperated sigh. “Look. There’s been a murder, OK? Not supposed to say that yet, but the gossip is all out anyway. And since you don’t want to talk to me, I’m giving you the reason why you have to. Mr. Towns did not die naturally, OK? So we’ll all be talking to everyone. You think we’re targeting you? We’re talking to all the people who knew him, the people who knew his routines, the people doing business with him, the people who found him, and the people who we know to have a beef with him. You know what that means, having a beef?”
“Young man!” Her eyes flashed. “You think that’s a new expression? Don’t make a fool of yourself!”
“Okay, okay. So you get it? So it’s not an unreasonable question. We’re doing our job like we’re supposed to.”
“Still, you are invading my privacy. None of your business, what a respectable senior citizen is doing of an evening.” She took a deep breath. “I was home alone all evening.”
“Can you prove it? Anyone see you? Any phone calls?”
“No.” She stared at him until he looked away. “I was alone, like I am most evenings. I have nothing else to say.” And the grim line of her mouth confirmed that she meant it.
“That’s ridiculous. Ridiculous!” He stopped, took a deep breath, seemed to pull himself together. “I was trying to keep this nice. We’ll come back with a team asking more questions. You want to make this hard? You have no idea what we can do.” He walked out, then turned and pointed to me. “You. Come talk to me.”
We stood in the foyer.
“Listen. You’re a friend, right? If you can, talk some sense into her. She’s got no reason to be such a pain in my ass, and my boss won’t be too happy I didn’t get answers. She’ll be sorry, too. That is, unless she really is hiding something.” He shook his head. “In that case, she’s better off not making us mad by hiding it for long. Get what I’m saying?”
Yes, I got it. It was pretty obvious. The idea that Louisa was involved in a murder was absurd, but her behavior did look evasive, even to me.
He left with a slammed door and a reminder that he was not done. I seemed to have a job in front of me, to reason with Louisa, but when I went back in, she looked up at me with a strange expression.
“Don’t even think it. They’ll have to make me tell them.”
“But…”
“Nothing to do with them, or Towns, or Watchtower. The truth was that Mr. Towns and I had been disagreeing for many years. True, I don’t—didn’t!—like him, but so what? What does it have to do with that body? Tell them that. And then I won’t have to tell them about my own personal life.”
I was pretty sure she was wrong about that.
“I’m very tired. Sierra, please help me lie down. No more company.”
That was my dismissal, the only thing that was clear about this encounter. I left, completely baffled and at a loss as to what I should do now. Off to my real job? Call Leary and see if he had any insights? Not that personal insight was his strong suit, but he was smart and knew her well and obviously, surprisingly, cared. I tried, but there was no answer. Go find a fancy overpriced coffee and a doughnut? A really large one? That sounded more than tempting.
Life presented a different answer. As I went down Louisa’s steep front steps, I could see Torres and Kahn in a conversation. Even from a distance, their body language shouted tension. She shook her head and opened a car door. I caught her just in time.
A pleasant smile. A tentative approach. “You two must have had a long day.”
“You bet. Started this morning when it was still dark. And it hasn’t stopped for a single second. We’re winding up now, so we can have a break.”
“I saw you from the steps…”
Kahn turned red.
“Tough young Kahn here had a little trouble with an old lady.” He turned redder when she added, “Lord, I get tired of training young detectives.” She looked at him and relented a little. “When you take a dinner break, think of how else we can approach this.” She stopped. “Not that I think she is the killer. But we need to know everything about that night, including whatever she is hiding. No excuses and no exceptions.”
“So you don’t believe her, either?”
“Oh, hell, no. I mean, it’s not impossible, but it sounds wrong. Really wrong.”
She closed her eyes, then opened them. “Hey, thanks for the material. I had more urgent things to handle today, though. Maybe tonight if I can keep my eyes open. Not freakin’ likely, though.”
“It’s pretty random background. I don’t know if you can use it. Maybe I could do better if I knew more about what happened?”
“Yeah?” I had a feeling she saw right through me. “What do you want to know?”
“Everything? I don’t know anything except he was found in a tunnel.”
“Yes.”
“Where is he, I mean, his body? Where is it now? I saw an ambulance.”
“Yes, that was him. Now he belongs to the ME. That’s Medical Examiner to you. Autopsy required, absent any witnesses.”
“He died alone?”
“Someone else was there.” That was Kahn.
“Oh. The killer.”
“That I can tell you, because, in spite of my best efforts, it’s gonna be on the news tonight.”
“So it’s true that it was definitely not like a heart attack or something?”
The young man snorted but stopped instantly when his senior looked at him. He said, carefully, “Only in the sense that a bullet will cause heart failure. He also showed signs of physical attack. Marks on his neck, bruises, and so on.”
“And it’s also true about a tunnel? One of the tunnels connecting the Watchtower buildings?”
“Well, we don’t mean the Holland Tunnel!” Great. A smart-aleck kid cop.
Torres gave him another exasperated look before she told me I had heard it right, that it was this building.
“Doesn’t that suggest it might have been someone he knew, another Witness?”
She almost admitted that, then stopped and said, “We don’t know yet. There are no damn clues, no one we’ve talked to so far saw or heard anything. They insist it would be impossible for one of their own to commit such a sin. And they are sure—sure!—it must have to do with the sale of their buildings. There has been resentment, they say, and even threats.”
“Come on. That’s impossible. A murder over real estate?”
I knew that was wrong even as I said it. Impossible? This is Brooklyn in the twenty-first century. Real estate can be a blood sport. Nothing is impossible,
“I don’t get it. Aren’t those tunnels heavily used? How could it possibly have happened there?”
“And yet, there he was.” Torres sighed. “A few early cafeteria cooks were heading to their jobs when they found him first thing this morning. He was lying on the floor. He’d been there for a while. We could tell.”
I tried to picture it but my mind wouldn’t let me. A body in the clean bright busy place I had heard about?
“They covered him up with jackets, tried CPR, and ran for help. “
“And he was shot?”
“He was,” Kahn confirmed. “Obviously not a street crime. No one had access to the tunnels except Witnesses until recently. And hardly any now.”
“Now? What’s happening now? “
“They say some contractors and so on have been down there. With the buildings being sold, the tunnels will be filled in. People buying the new co-ops they’re planning sure don’t want secret tunnels under their buildings.”
“So a few random people in and out. Can you track them?”
He grinned. “You bet.”
“Like we said,” Torres added, turning back to me, “there is a lot of conflict about those sales. So whatever you can pick up that gives objective background? Who knows? Maybe it will lead somewhere. Doubt it, but who knows? Kahn,” she added, “go eat lunch and think up some new approach for Gibbs. We’ve got to do that better. I’m heading home for a little while.”
I wanted to head home too, to sort out what I’d learned and what I’d given Sergeant Torres. There was nothing else I could do, I thought.
And then I ran into one more person I knew.
Chapter Fourteen
I ran into him literally. Or he ran into me. Working my way around the barriers, past the various personnel completing their work, he turned a corner, eyes on his phone, and slammed right into me. We had a hard, shoulder-to-shoulder collision, and I landed on the sidewalk.
“You’re all right? Not hurt?” He helped me up. I hurt, but I could stand and move. “I’m meeting up with some people, but come along, I see EMS workers. I’ll get you some first aid if needed.”
He was on his way before I was fully upright. I limped along, struggling to keep up.
I knew him.
That was Mike Prinzig. I’d met him at his own home, with Joe, at that party full of real estate businessmen. The owner of the company buying up parcels of the Jehovah’s Witnesses property.
My first thought was, “Would he recognize me in my dowdy work clothes?” That night I’d been dressed to shine. And a full dressing table of makeup! And my second thought was, “So what if he does not? What do I have to lose?”
I stood up straight and pasted a smile on my face.
“Mr. Prinzig?”
He looked at me with a question, and not a friendly one. Not the gleam of interest he’d had when I was more in party mode. This was more “Who the hell are you to be bothering me? I’ll walk you to the EMS workers so you won’t sue me, and then I erase you.”
I put out my hand, smiled brightly, said, “I’m Erica Donato. Joe Greenberg introduced us at your housewarming party. This is quite a shock
ing day, isn’t it?”
“Insane.” He was already walking away, toward the building, with me trying to keep up alongside. “Do you have a connection here I need to know about?” He looked harassed, as everyone on this site did today. He didn’t even pause in his stride.
“I am assisting Sergeant Torres with some background research. I am allowed to be here.” I would stretch that story until it ripped. “Could I have a minute of your time?”
He ignored me as he turned to the group at the building door and announced, “Cops are done. I made them let us take a look.”
I followed. He had said, “Come along,” hadn’t he?
Into the building, through the bland lobby and toward the back, an unmarked door. Two men and a woman in smart suits and a man in a decidedly not smart suit with an ID lanyard around his neck.
Crime scene tape was still up, but he told the cop on duty that Torres said he could be admitted. I stayed close and quiet. I was making myself as invisible as I could. The officer made a quick call and then carefully lifted the tape.
They were lost in conversation about due dates and payments, and seemed to have forgotten me. I wanted to make sure that continued. He opened the door, and I slipped in behind him and down the stairs.
I was in a brightly lit, shiny-paneled, linoleum-floored space that went on forever.
“It really is just like a hospital hallway.” I didn’t realize I had said it out loud until he turned around to me.
“What are you doing here?”
“You said to follow you, so I did.” My story and I would stick to it.
“Did I?” He looked puzzled. “Maybe I did. This day has been too much, too damn much.” His voice faded off but then snapped back. “Yes, it’s like a hospital hallway. Were you thinking it would be like a subway tunnel?”
“No, no, I heard it was clean and bright.” In my own mind, though, I had seen it as dark and mysterious.
“We’re checking to see if it’s back in order. One more freaking thing to be on top of until the sale is final, looking for anything that doesn’t belong here.” He paused. “And nothing belongs here. It should be a broom-clean passageway now.” He turned and stalked off.