by Barbara Paul
Foley threw down his pencil. “Shit. You sure don’t mind wasting other people’s time, do you? You know damn well it wasn’t a personal enemy that killed ’em.”
“I know it and you know it,” Marian replied soberly, “but the Major Crimes Unit doesn’t know it. Or at least they’ll say they don’t.”
“Major Crimes? What the hell do they have to do with it?”
“DiFalco told me the MCU wants to take over this case. The first sign of sloppy police work on our part, they’ll be all over us and it’s bye-bye to the East River Park murders. So we’re going to cover everything, and then we’re going to go back and cover it again.”
Foley nodded slowly, understanding. “Jesus, they wouldn’t take it away from us now? Forget that, sure they would! Let us do all the legwork and then grab the collar for themselves.”
“So you see why we have to be doubly careful? Foley, I want you to make all these assignments yourself. Everyone is to report to you. Do whatever shifting or adjusting you think necessary. You’re in charge.” The one thing Marian had never tried in her dealings with her troublesome partner was giving him a little authority—for the simple reason that she didn’t trust him. But this time he wouldn’t be in a position to get someone killed by not being where he was supposed to be.
Besides, she intended to check on him every step of the way.
Foley was sitting up straighter. “And where will you be?” he asked importantly.
“I have to check with DiFalco, and then I’m going to Universal Laser.”
On her way to the captain’s office, Marian heard Foley yell, “Sanchez! Roberts! Get your asses over here! I’ve got a job for you.” A real take-charge kind of guy.
She opened DiFalco’s door and saw the captain waving a large envelope at her. “Autopsy report—just in. They all died at the same time.”
Marian slid the report out of the envelope and started reading. “Time of death between six and nine o’clock, estimation based on the stage of rigor mortis in the bodies of Webb, Bigelow, and O’Neill at time of examination.” Herb Vickers excluded; Marian looked up. “Dr. Whittaker told me some fat people don’t go through rigor at all.”
“Yah, I knew that,” DiFalco said.
She read on. “He says the abrasions on the wrists were made before death—all four men were handcuffed while they were still alive. Death in each case was caused by a thirty-eight-caliber bullet through the right eye. Lividity indicates the bodies were moved after death.”
“Hell, I knew that too.”
“Between six and nine,” Marian mused. “Did they stay in O’Neill’s apartment all that time? From one-thirty or two on?”
“They must have. Maybe they were waiting for the killer—not knowing he was a killer. Then when he got there, he and the van driver handcuffed them together … why? Just to get ’em in the van?”
“Wouldn’t that be rather noticeable? It’s still light at six o’clock.”
“So he just killed them there? And then waited until dark to move them? Then why the handcuffs?”
Marian licked her lips. “I don’t think they were killed in O’Neill’s apartment. I think they went out somewhere together, to do something.”
“And got caught by the killer?”
She shrugged.
DiFalco tapped a forefinger against his chin. “It’s possible, I guess. Did you talk to the Crime Scene Unit?”
“Just a few minutes ago. They know to look for evidence about the meeting as well as the murders.”
The captain nodded. “What’s your next move?”
Marian explained what she had Foley and the others working on. “If we can’t trace their steps after they left O’Neill’s apartment, we’re going to have to abandon that line of inquiry and go at it from another direction. We’ll have to try to pin down the motive.”
DiFalco made a rude noise. “Needle in a haystack.”
“Not really. We know the reason’s connected with Universal Laser Technologies and Washington.”
“Two pretty big haystacks, if you ask me. Speaking of Washington, where are the two feds?”
Marian told him about the message from Trevor Page. “They’re cutting us out already, Captain. I don’t know what Holland’s working on in New York and I don’t know why Page went to Washington.”
DiFalco swore. “Larch, sometime today I want you to get hold of the one who stayed here—Holland, that the one? Get him to meet you, make up some excuse. Don’t let those sonsa-bitches forget that this is a joint investigation! Goddammit, we open our files to them and the first thing they do is pull a vanishing act! Well, I won’t have it! Do you hear what I’m saying? Do you hear?”
She was sitting four feet away. “Yes, sir. I hear.”
“You get hold of this Holland and you—which one is he, by the way?”
“The cynical one.”
“Oh, him. Go call him now.”
“Excuse me, Captain,” Marian said, “but I think I should go to Universal Laser first. This is their first workday since those four men were killed, and it might be a good chance to pick up something.”
He thought that over. “Yah, you’re right—it might be at that. Well, what are you sitting there for? Get a move on!”
“On my way,” Marian said.
9
Universal Laser Technologies had factories in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, but its corporate headquarters were in the West Fifties near Fifth, about as high-rent as the local real estate could get. Marian was most curious to see this paradigm of American industry, where office politics were not tolerated and no one had ever made any enemies. Even if Edgar Quinn had not said that, she would have suspected him of having a fondness for hyperbole, simply from his reaction to the news about Conrad Webb’s death. Webb had been like a second father, Quinn had said. The latter had had a few bad moments, but then he’d recovered quickly enough to answer Marian’s questions lucidly and articulately. Quinn had obviously been fond of the old man and his death had shaken him—but a second father? Marian doubted it.
Building security was tight. Marian had to show her badge in the lobby even to be allowed on the elevator, and again on the eighteenth floor, where she was issued a visitor’s badge by a receptionist. Universal Laser wasn’t exactly what Marian had been expecting. For one thing, Dress for success didn’t mean much there; she saw more jeans and sneakers than she did neckties and high heels. The offices themselves disclosed a pleasant-enough working environment, but there’d been no attempt to turn them into a showplace. On her way to Edgar Quinn’s office, Marian spotted an arrow sign pointing to the legal department. On impulse she turned in that direction.
The legal department was a small complex of offices off to itself. Two women were standing in the middle of the reception area, talking; they looked distraught and nervous. Marian cleared her throat and they both jumped. She asked for Sherman Bigelow’s secretary; in Mr. Bigelow’s office, she was told, over there.
Marian knocked on the door and was invited in. The woman sitting behind the big desk had been crying; she made a visible effort to pull herself together. “May I help you?” she said automatically. The secretary’s theme song.
Marian identified herself and learned the secretary’s name was North. She asked her, “Did you just hear of Mr. Bigelow’s death?”
North shook her head. “It just hit me all over again, when I came in to check Mr. Bigelow’s calendar and see if he’d made any notes for what he wanted done this week.” Her voice was high and tense. “Normally he’d leave them on my desk, but now …”
Marian asked to see the calendar. The secretary got up and walked around the desk to hand it to her. She turned out to be on the plump side and wearing baggy slaeks and espadrilles; not the usual picture of an executive secretary, but she looked very comfortable. Marian glanced at Bigelow’s calendar. Business meetings, a doctor’s appointment, dinner engagement Thursday night. “This appointment with Dr. Greenberg … was Mr. Bigelow ill?”
“Thank you. Did Mr. Bigelow seem to be acting normally when he got back from Washington last week?”
“Normally?” A high squeak.
“Did he appear to be worried, distracted? On edge?”
North paused long enough to get her voice under control. “I noticed nothing, Sergeant. Everything appeared quite as usual to me.”
Marian studied the woman, wondering what was going on. “Ms North, what are you afraid of?”
Her eyes grew huge. “Four people in this company are murdered and you ask me what I’m afraid of?”
“You think you are in danger?”
“Me? No, ah, why should I be in danger? I never said anything!”
“Never said anything? About what?”
“About anything! I don’t talk outside these offices. I keep the company’s confidentiality.”
Marian stepped closer to her. “I think you just told me that you do know something.”
“No I don’t! I mean, I know my job, but that’s all! I don’t know why Mr. Bigelow was killed! Sergeant Larch, I’m trying to cooperate—please don’t bully me. We’re all very distressed, and this is difficult for me.”
“Of course it is,” Marian said soothingly. “I know it’s not easy and I want you to understand I do appreciate your cooperation. Especially since we can’t locate Mrs. Bigelow—anything you can tell me will be a help.”
The other woman looked surprised. “Mrs. Bigelow? She’s at their place in Connecticut.”
It was Marian’s turn to look surprised. “She told you she was going to Connecticut?”
“I talked to her on the phone yesterday,” the secretary said, obviously relieved at the change of subject. “I heard about Mr. Bigelow on the news and tried calling their apartment. But when I got the answering machine, I simply assumed she wanted to get out of the city and I called their weekend place. Mrs. Bigelow just wants to be by herself for a while. She said she can’t even make arrangements for the funeral until the Medical Examiner releases the body.”
“That’ll probably be today. Do you have an address in Connecticut, and a phone number?”
North wrote them down for her. Marian borrowed a phone and called Foley to tell him where he could find Mrs. Bigelow, while the secretary photocopied the appointment sheet. Marian didn’t press her any further; she wanted first to see whether North’s reaction was characteristic of the Universal Laser employees as a whole or not. The woman was very nervous.
Marian tracked down the secretaries of Conrad Webb, Herb Vickers, and Jason O’Neill. All of them tried to conceal the fact that they were afraid. Webb’s secretary was a man, and Marian asked him why he didn’t resign if working there made him so nervous; he stammered something about good jobs being hard to find and changed the subject. The tension wasn’t limited to just the secretaries, Marian found; everyone she talked to was keyed up and edgy—a receptionist, a researcher, a couple of managers, a procurement agent. She spent a little time in the advertising department; even the air there was charged with the same edgy electricity.
The morning was almost gone. Marian sat at Jason O’Neill’s desk and tried to get a fix on the situation. In a group of people this size, there ought to have been a few otherwise decent people who got a pleasurable excitement out of what had happened—the gleaming-eyed, lip-licking, Oh-how-terrible-tell-me-about-it reaction that had surfaced in every murder case Marian had ever investigated. But none of the Universal employees she’d talked to had reacted like that. Not one.
Marian spread out the four murdered men’s appointment sheets she’d collected and studied them. They had only one appointment in common, a meeting scheduled with Edgar Quinn on Wednesday. Time to go see the boss.
Quinn’s secretary seemed to know her and ushered her right in; Quinn himself was waiting for her, in an office considerably larger than all the other offices she’d been in. Marian saw immediately where the company’s casual style of dress came from: Quinn was wearing a loose Armani shirt and faded jeans, no tie or jacket. And sandals—holding on to summer as long as he could, clear into September. Not your typical president of a big company. “I was wondering when you’d get around to me,” Quinn said with a dry smile.
Marian looked at the triangular face and the upswept hair; the man’s face was unreadable. She told him they had a time of death for the four victims now, and asked him where he’d been on Saturday night.
His face became readable very quickly; he didn’t like being asked such a question. “My wife and I went with some friends to see a show, an experimental thing in one of those dreary little SoHo theaters. Then we hit a few clubs afterward.”
“What time did the show start?”
“Eight.” He gave her the name of the show and of the friends he and his wife had been with.
The murders had taken place between six and nine; close timing. Could a man commit four murders and then calmly go out for a social evening with his wife and friends? Marian had no reason to think Quinn was behind the killings; it was just that her list of suspects was nonexistent. “You were expecting me, Mr. Quinn—you know I’ve been talking to your employees. Or trying to talk to them. These people here are afraid.”
Quinn made a huh sound. “I’m not surprised. What did you expect? I’m afraid. Four of our people have been murdered, for god’s sake.”
“Why does a middle manager who had nothing to do with the liaison group keep looking over his shoulder? An artist in your advertising department who didn’t even know three of the four victims—what’s he so nervous about? What’s going on, Mr. Quinn?”
He ran his fingers through the sides of his hair, sweeping it up even more. “Sergeant, maybe you’re used to this sort of thing, but we’re not. Conrad Webb’s death alone would have rattled everybody, but when his three teammates are killed with him … well.”
“What will their deaths do to the company?”
“They’ll hold up business with the Defense Department for one thing, until they can be replaced. Even then, we’ll lose some time—the replacement team will have to be briefed almost from scratch.”
“Who’s going to be the new liaison?”
“I don’t know yet. I’ll have to go to Washington myself in a day or so, but I haven’t had time to work up a permanent group. I may ask Elizabeth to take over—Elizabeth Tanner, our vice president in charge of production. She’s been in on it from the beginning.”
“In on what?”
Quinn shot her a sharp look. “The project we’re working on for the Defense Department.”
“Is that the Top Secret one you can’t talk about?”
“That’s the one. And I still can’t talk about it.”
“What about the meeting you had scheduled for Wednesday? The one with all four murder victims?”
“A briefing for their next trip to Washington. And I can’t tell you about that, either.”
Marian took a deep breath. “Mr. Quinn, the NYPD is working with the FBI on this case, on an equal information-sharing basis.” Hah. “Whatever your project is, we’ll learn about it eventually.”
He shook his head. “Then you’ll have to learn it from the FBI, not from me. We could lose the contract if I shoot off my mouth. There’s a reason for all this hush-hush stuff, Sergeant. Over the past forty years every single new development in technology has been immediately followed by another designed to neutralize it. So any edge we might have is lost once specifics of the new development are known. We once built a device for Israeli tanks to detect a particular laser-targeting weapon the Syrians had—before the Syrian lasers were ready for use. All because of leaked information.”
“Aren’t you giving something away?” Marian asked wryly.
Quinn smiled. “No, both those devices are obsolete now. But you do see my point, don’t yo
u? Each new generation of technology has only a short life span. Its period of effectiveness is determined solely by how long it takes for countering devices to be developed. And once that happens, new technology is needed to counter those devices—and on and on ad infinitum. That’s not ever going to change.”
Marian scowled. “What a depressing thought. About this leaking of information—could Mr. Webb and the others have learned anything in Washington that made them a danger to someone?”
“I’m sure they didn’t. They would have informed Elizabeth Tanner or me immediately if they had. Unless it was something one of them didn’t want to pass on?”
What’s this? “Didn’t want to? You mean one of them might have deliberately kept something from you?”
Again the fingers through the hair. “Dammit, Sergeant, I don’t want to think that! Do you think I like suspecting one of my own people of working against me?”
“Working against you how? Selling secrets?”
“What else could it be? Maybe the deal went sour, and the buyer felt cheated or was afraid his source would talk—I don’t know.”
“Then why kill all four of them? Could they all have been in on it?”
“Impossible!” Quinn looked offended by the question. “Conrad Webb would no more sell out this company than he’d slit his own throat. I don’t know why they were all killed. As a precautionary measure?”
“Some precaution,” Marian remarked. “If one of them did sell you out, which one do you think it was?”
“I have no idea.”
“Guess.”
He shrugged. “Jason O’Neill.”
“Why him?”
“He was the youngest, he hadn’t been with us as long. Jason hadn’t had the time to build up a sense of company loyalty like the others.”
“And that’s your only reason for picking him? The fact that he hadn’t worked for you as long as the other three?”
“That’s my only reason.”
It wasn’t much of one. “Did you tell all this to the FBI?”
“No.” Quinn sighed deeply. “And frankly I’m already regretting saying anything to you. I don’t really know anyone sold me out. It’s just that I can’t think of any other reason they’d be killed. Speaking of the FBI, did you run into them? They’re here now.”