Blonde Ice

by R. G. Belsky

  Bob Wylie had been a client of—and later had an affair of sorts with—Houston. That meant there was now a Houston connection to the third murder, Tim Hammacher. Not a direct connection, but Hammacher’s boss had been a client of Victoria Issacs when she was Houston. That had to mean something. I knew, of course, there was already a Houston connection to the first murder—of her husband, Walter Issacs. I didn’t know of any Houston connection to the second victim, Rick Faris. But that didn’t mean there wasn’t one to find. Yep, no matter how you looked at it, there was a Houston thread running all through this Blonde Ice business.

  I had thought that I was the common denominator here. Like Susan had said, Melissa Ross seemed to have some sort of obsession with me—coming to me to announce the murders so far. But what if this wasn’t about me? What if it was really about my connection to somebody else?

  Houston would be the obvious choice.

  I had become famous—or infamous, depending on how you viewed it—for the original Houston story. Victoria Issacs, aka Houston, had hired Melissa Ross to investigate her husband’s philandering. I knew now that Houston had once slept—for money—with the boss of Melissa Ross’s most recent victim.

  But there was one other person who now appeared to have connections of some sort to all three of the murders.

  Bob Wylie.

  He’d had a relationship with Houston, the wife of the first victim. I also remembered that Melissa Ross had announced the second murder—Rick Faris—when Wylie was on Live from New York with me. I didn’t give any real significance to that fact then, but now it seemed much more relevant. And later, of course, there was the murder of his man Hammacher. Which seemed to have been done because of Hammacher’s relationship with Wylie. Yep, Bob Wylie was linked in some way to the circumstances of all three Blonde Ice murders. This could be the clue I was looking for. The clue I needed to break the case wide open.

  Aha! I said to myself.

  I wanted to stand up and say it out loud in the newsroom—like a real detective—but I feared my coworkers might find that a tad pretentious. So I just sat there in quiet admiration of myself and my genius for figuring all of this out.

  This self-congratulation was tempered a bit by the realization that I still had no idea what the Wylie connection meant or where it was headed or what might come next.

  What did I really know about Wylie?

  Well, I knew a lot.

  But maybe I should find out more.

  * * *

  I told Zeena that I needed her to pull together some clips and information on somebody for me.

  “Is this professional or personal?” she asked.

  “Now, why would it be personal?”

  “You know, some woman you’re looking to scope out before you take the plunge.”

  “Zeena, have I ever asked you to do something like that for me?”

  “Sure, a few months ago. The woman who turned out to be the triple bigamist.”

  “Okay, once,” I said.

  I explained to her that I wanted whatever biographical information she could get me on Bob Wylie. Then I went back to my desk. I figured it would take her a while to do that. But she quickly sent me a detailed file on Wylie’s life and career.

  “How’d you do this so fast?” I asked.

  “Stacy had already asked me to do it for her when she was getting ready to have him as a guest on Live from New York. So it was all ready to go.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me that before?”

  “You didn’t ask.”

  Fair enough.

  I read through all the material about Wylie. Newspaper articles. TV interviews. Some longer pieces, including in-depth magazine interviews and covers. The guy had a Facebook page and a Twitter account too.

  With one notable exception, Wylie had led a charmed—almost storybook—life.

  A high school football star and honor student in Massillon, Ohio, where he grew up. President of his class. Got scholarships—both athletic and academic—to Cornell, where he was a political science major. Then he went on to get a law degree. But he never practiced law. Instead, he joined the police department. In an interview once, Wylie talked about that decision.

  “I cared very much about the law,” he said. “But there were so many lawyers out there. Many of them unfortunately devoted their careers to keeping the guilty out of jail because the financial rewards were so considerable as a prominent defense attorney. I could have chosen that route. Or, on the other side of the fence, I might have become a prosecutor who tried to put guilty people in jail. But I decided I could make a greater contribution on the front line of crime. As a police officer. I’m proud of that decision. It’s a decision that I’ve never regretted for a single instant.”

  Wylie rose quickly through the ranks. Made detective. Then lieutenant and captain. He became the youngest precinct commander in the history of the New York City Police Department.

  He was eventually hired as police commissioner by the city of St. Louis. He moved there and put together an impressive record. Crime went down, the streets became safer, corruption was curtailed—and the morale of the St. Louis Police Department was said to be at an all-time high during his tenure as the chief law enforcement official there.

  But then he unexpectedly resigned and moved back to New York City. He opened up his own security firm in New York, with high-profile clients who hired him for protection from kidnapping, terrorism, and all sorts of other dangers they faced because of their affluence. Wylie himself became quite wealthy by doing this.

  When a new mayor was elected in New York, he wooed Wylie and convinced him to join his administration, overseeing law enforcement as deputy commissioner. Wylie gave up his flourishing business, his wealthy clients, and all the rest of it to take the job.

  He quickly became a popular figure in New York. The media loved him. They loved him more than they loved the mayor. And so, in the public eye, he began to eclipse the mayor he worked for. The highlight of the media attention came when his picture wound up on the cover of Time magazine with the headline THE MAN WHO HAS MADE NEW YORK CITY A GOOD PLACE TO LIVE AGAIN. Now that it looked like Wylie was going to run in the next mayoral election, most of the political experts had already tabbed him as the clear favorite in the race.

  No matter how you looked at it, Bob Wylie was a real feel-good success story.

  The only thing that marred it was a tragedy that happened to his wife and children.

  When he was in St. Louis, Wylie had met and married Deborah Hawkins, a local real estate broker. They’d had two children—a son, Robert Jr., and a daughter, Samantha. But they all died when a fire swept through their house one night. Wylie normally would have been there too. But, at the last minute, he had been summoned to the scene of a major shooting in which several officers had been wounded. He was at the hospital with the fallen officers when he learned that his entire family had died in the fire.

  Many people thought that was the reason he left St. Louis. That the city held too many bad memories for him. By going to New York, he could start fresh again without the constant reminders of everything that he had suddenly lost.

  There was nothing startling in any of this. Nothing that jumped out to me as particularly new or interesting or important in the Bob Wylie life story. High school football hero. Academic star in college and law school. Outstanding cop. Successful businessman. A popular, high-profile deputy mayor and now a hot candidate for mayor.

  Helluva record.

  Helluva career.

  Helluva guy.

  * * *

  I asked Jeff Aronson to meet me for a drink at a bar near Foley Square. Aronson was the top criminal justice guy on the News. He worked out of a courthouse in Foley Square most of the time. But he was plugged into the cop part of stuff too. We’d both started out together at the paper around the same time and we’d both had successful runs—albeit taking different paths. My career was mercurial—full of ups and downs. His was steady all the way.<
br />
  I didn’t want to reveal the real reason I’d asked to see him: to find out more about Bob Wylie. So we just talked in general for a while, about the Blonde Ice investigation and the bizarre phenomenon of a sexy blonde killer murdering men who cheated on their wives.

  Aronson was on his second drink before I tried to steer him in the direction of talking about Wylie. He always had exactly two drinks, no more. Then he went home to his wife and four children in New Jersey. He seemed like the perfect husband, the perfect father. But then people had said that about Tim Hammacher too. You never know what demons are inside people.

  “Did you ever think about doing something like that?” I asked him when we talked about the three victims.

  “You mean cheating on my wife with another woman?”

  “Yes.”

  “Every man thinks about other women, Gil,” he said, surprising me a bit with his honesty. “But no, I never have cheated on my wife, and I never would cheat on her.”

  “How can you be so sure of that?”

  “Because my wife and family are too important to me to throw it all away for a brief bout of passion with some woman that I really didn’t know. How about you when you were married to Susan?”

  “I strayed on occasion for a brief bout of passion.”

  “So you probably have some sympathy for the three guys that got murdered, huh?”

  “All they were doing was trying to get laid. Hard to resist that urge when someone who looks like Melissa Ross seduces you into bed. And they sure didn’t deserve to get killed for it.”

  Aronson was getting close to finishing his second drink now. I asked him about Wylie.

  “Well, if Bob Wylie solves the case, he’s going to be a big hero in New York City. Should be a shoo-in to be elected mayor then. Of course, if he doesn’t catch the Ross woman and there are more men killed, it’s going to look bad for him and maybe ruin his chances for mayor. But he’s going to catch her soon. She can’t run forever. And then he’ll make it to Gracie Mansion—the latest in a long line of career successes for him.”

  “What do you think of Wylie?” I asked.

  “Why?”

  “Just wondering.”

  “Bob Wylie’s got the whole package. Great résumé, great looks, great charisma. Not a hint of scandal in his many years of public service. The guy’s a winner.”

  “He sounds perfect,” I admitted.

  “Yeah, almost too perfect.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “This is probably just my old reporter’s cynicism talking. Nothing else. But how can a guy that’s been in public life for so long not have some kind of secrets—some kind of skeletons in his closet—that we don’t know about? It just doesn’t make sense. Of course, I have no idea what they might be though.”

  I did. I knew about him and Houston. But I wasn’t ready to talk about that with Aronson—or anybody else at the News—yet.

  “Word I’ve heard is that you might go to work for him once he does get elected mayor,” Aronson said to me.

  “Doubtful.”

  “Why not?” He finished off the rest of his drink. “The mayor’s seat could just be a stepping stone. Maybe governor after that. Senator. Or hell, even a White House run down the line. Wylie’s a political rising star and you could go along for the ride. Why not jump at the opportunity to hitch your star to a guy like that?”

  “Like you said, Jeff, he seems almost too perfect.”

  CHAPTER 25

  HOW did she do it?” Vincent D’Nolfo asked.

  “Melissa Ross?”

  “Yes, how did she kill them?”

  “She stabbed them. Strangled them. Beat them.”

  “I mean how did she do it? How did she overpower all three of these men so easily?”

  D’Nolfo and I were at the NYPD shooting range. I’d never fired a gun in my life, but he’d offered to give me a lesson. Said it was the least he could do for helping him onto the police force.

  I went through all the potential possibilities about Melissa Ross, like I’d done with my editors at the News when this question came up. She could have used a gun, maybe she was a black belt in karate, and—my suggestion—she may have worked a Basic Instinct sexual ploy like Sharon Stone in the movie to get them to let her tie them up, and then killed them while they were helpless.

  “I don’t know,” D’Nolfo said. “It’s pretty hard to imagine that all these guys would let her restrain them like that. I don’t think she could count on that happening every time she tried to kill a man.”

  “I guess we’ll find out how she did it when we finally catch her,” I told him.

  “Maybe finding out how she did it would help catch her,” he said.

  I squeezed the trigger on the gun I was holding and began shooting at the target in front of me. I hadn’t hit much of anything so far. This was a lot harder to do than it looked on TV or in the movies.

  “Damn, you’re starting to think like a policeman,” I said. “How’s it going so far on the job?”

  “Pretty good. I got assigned to a precinct in Brooklyn. Everyone treats me really well. Much of it is because of the publicity and praise I got from Wylie on your TV show. Thanks again for doing that.”

  I squeezed off a series of more shots that went nowhere near the target.

  “You’re jerking when you pull the trigger,” D’Nolfo said.

  “The gun jerks.”

  “No, it’s you. Let me show you. . . .”

  He took my gun and let loose a volley of shots.

  They all hit the target dead center.

  “Jeez, that’s freaky,” I said. “How did you learn to shoot like that?”

  “In Afghanistan and Iraq. I had to learn how to shoot to stay alive.”

  “You must have been a helluva soldier. Big as you are. Tough as you are. And able to shoot like that.”

  “Just relax,” he said. “You’re moving around too much when you shoot. You can’t hit anything doing that. Always remember three things when you have a gun in your hands: Aim. Steady. Squeeze.”

  “Aim, steady, squeeze,” I said. “That’s it?”

  “Try it.”

  I did. I came a bit closer this time, but I was still all over the place with my shots.

  I looked again at the precise pattern of shots that D’Nolfo had put up on the target.

  “I’m just glad you were on my side.”

  “Still am,” D’Nolfo said.

  * * *

  After I got back to the office, I called Lieutenant Wohlers to see if he had come up with anything new on the search for Melissa Ross. He was not friendly.

  “I can’t investigate this case if I have to stop and give you update briefings all the time,” he barked at me.

  “I thought we were partners.”

  “Partners how?”

  “I tell you what I find out, you tell me what you find out.”

  “Yeah, well, when you find something out, let me know—and we’ll see how that goes.”

  “What’s got you so grumpy, Lieutenant?”

  “This case. This damn case. Every time I think I find something out, it all falls apart on me. And then I’m suddenly going in another direction.”

  “Where are you anyway?”

  “I’m at the coroner’s office.”

  “Well, that would put anybody in a depressed mood, I suppose.”

  “I gotta get off the phone. I gotta deal with this new stuff right now.”

  “What new stuff?”

  “The next sound you hear will be me ending this conversation.”

  After he hung up on me, I pondered what had just happened. Wohlers was in a bad mood. Something he just found had upset him. Something new that changed the direction of the investigation, he said. He was in the coroner’s office when I called him. Hence, the new information—which is what was upsetting him—must have come from the coroner’s office. I sometimes even amaze myself with my steel trap of a mind.

  I knew a woman
in the coroner’s office named Karen Greene. I’d used her as a source in the past. I called to see if she was on duty today. The person who answered said she was. I thought about just talking to her over the phone, but I knew I had to go see her in person at the coroner’s office if I had any hope of getting what I needed. Damn. Going to visit a coroner wasn’t my favorite way to spend a sunny June afternoon.

  When I got there, I looked at the sign on the door that said Coroner and hesitated briefly. Then I pushed open the door and went inside. I tried very hard not to think about the gruesome things that went on here. The truth was I hated the sight of dead bodies. I had realized that at the first murder scene I ever went to. Not a good thing for a crime reporter, but being around dead bodies still always gave me the creeps.

  Karen Greene was an African-American woman in her forties, who had worked in the coroner’s office more than fifteen years. She’d seen it all and done it all. She was working on something—I assume a body—when I walked into a room where she was bent over a table. She looked up with surprise when she saw me.

  “I hope I didn’t catch you at a bad time,” I said.

  “Nah, it’s really dead around here,” she said.

  Then she laughed loudly.

  “Hilarious,” I told her.

  “Sorry, just an old ME’s office joke.”

  She took her hand out from beneath a sheet, wiped some blood off on a towel, and then walked over to me.

  “What brings you down here, Malloy?”

  “I wanted to find out if you’d finished the autopsy on Tim Hammacher,” I said, picking the most obvious thing I figured Wohlers would have been here to find out about.

  “Gee, the police just asked me that too.”

  “Lieutenant Frank Wohlers?”

  “Ah, yes. Frank Wohlers. The human garbage receptacle.”

  “I assume you’re referring to his propensity for consuming large amounts of healthy and nutritional food.”

  “And now you’re here to ask me the same question.”

  “Great minds and all—”