by Jason Starr
“Go home,” Katie said.
“What do you mean?” her mom said. “We’ll be there by two, two thirty.”
“No, I don’t need you. It’s not as big a deal as I made it last night. I didn’t know the guy for very long. I have friends here taking care of me.”
“We’re coming anyway,” her mom insisted.
“No, go back. Please.”
What the hell had she been thinking? Being around her parents always made things worse. She had no idea why she’d agreed to let them come to the city.
Her father, driving, said something Katie couldn’t make out and her mother said angrily, “Will you be quiet? I’m talking.” Katie could hear her father saying, “Why doesn’t she want us there?” and then her mother going, “You want to talk to her?…Then stop interrupting.”
Katie rolled her eyes. God, she hated this.
Then she said, “I really don’t want you here, Mother.” Mother. Did she really say that? She hadn’t called her mom “mother” since she was a teenager.
“We’ll just stay for one night,” her mother said.
“I don’t want you here at all,” Katie said. “Just turn around and go home.”
The argument with her parents lasted for about twenty minutes. Katie started screaming at her mother, and then her father got on the phone and she had to scream at him, too. Finally, sounding like a melodramatic sixteen-year-old, she told them that if they came to New York she’d never talk to them again and would hate them forever. She knew she was manipulating the hell out of them, that after losing Heather, the thought of losing another daughter, in any way, terrified them more than anything. Katie didn’t want to make her parents feel bad, but she didn’t want the stress of having them in New York, either, and the strategy worked. Her parents agreed to return to Lenox.
Katie was relieved that she didn’t have to deal with the hassle of having her parents in town, but then she felt guilty. She was going to call them back, to tell them to come after all, but better sense prevailed. Instead, she called the detective, to see what was going on with the case. She found the business card he’d given her, but when she called, she got his voice mail. She left a message with her phone number, and about five minutes later Detective Himoto returned the call.
“How are you today?” he asked.
“Okay,” she said. “I mean, I’m dealing, you know?”
“I think I mentioned this yesterday, but if you want me to get you some psychological counseling, I’d—”
“That’s okay. I think I just need some time.”
“Well, if you change your mind, you let me know. And I have some news that might make you feel a little better about things.”
“Really?”
“Maybe better’s the wrong word. Relieved’s more like it. We had a break in the case this morning. Looks like we got the guy.”
EIGHTEEN
“Wow, that’s incredible,” Katie said. “Who? Where? What happened?”
John Himoto, sitting at his desk, which was covered with stacks of papers and files, said, “Jesus, so many questions, I don’t know which one to answer first. I can’t tell you the details right now, but a man walked into a precinct in midtown this morning and confessed.”
“Who was he?”
“I really can’t divulge that information. As soon as I can, I’ll give you a call and let you know, okay? I know how important it is for you to have closure.”
“Is it somebody Andy knew?”
“Apparently not. Sorry, I really can’t tell you anything else at this point, okay?”
“Okay, I understand. Wow, this is such a huge relief. I mean, to know this guy isn’t out there anymore.”
“That’s why I wanted to let you know about it. And I’ll be back in touch shortly—I promise. You take care of yourself now, okay?”
As John continued eating his breakfast—two eggs with ham on a roll and a black coffee—he felt relieved. It was nice to give someone good news for a change, and he was genuinely happy that Katie seemed to be handling things well.
Then John’s commanding officer, Louis Morales, poked his head into John’s office and said, “What’s this? We get a confession, you go on vacation?”
“What, I can’t have some breakfast?” John said.
“In my office, right now.”
Louis closed the door and John watched Louis’s shadow pass along the clouded glass as he walked away.
John took another bite of the sandwich, then flung the rest toward the waste basket. It missed, hitting the wall and rebounding away. “Goddamn it,” he said, and shoved a pile of papers off his desk, onto the floor.
When John entered Louis’s office, Louis was on the phone and motioned with his jaw toward the chair in front of his desk. John couldn’t help smiling and shaking his head as he sat down. Louis had made it sound as if the meeting was urgent, but now John had to overhear a conversation between Louis and his wife, discussing repairs on her car.
Finally Louis ended the call and said to John in a no-bullshit tone, “What the fuck is going on?”
“With what?” John had no idea what all the attitude was about.
“The procrastinating breakfast shit. You know how much heat’s on this case?”
“I slept two fuckin’ hours last night.”
“Then go home and take a nap. You’re hungry, you’re tired. I’m horny, you see me sitting at my desk jerking off? I’ll make somebody else lead detective on this case. Fuckin’ lucky I didn’t do that already, wanna know the truth.”
“So what do you want me to do, kiss your ass?”
“No, I want you to cross every t and dot every i and make sure this is the guy.”
“What makes you think I’m not?”
“Did you even talk to him?”
“No, I figured, What’s the point?”
“Stop fucking with me.”
“I interrogated him this morning, was there for the polygraph. Look, the guy’s not playing with a full deck—that’s obvious. We know he’s been on the street for a long time, lately spending some nights at the shelter on Seventy-seventh. Tell you the truth, when I saw him, I wasn’t very optimistic. But he passed the polygraph and now we’re doing a psych eval.”
Louis, still seeming unimpressed, said, “What’s his story?”
“He said he was sleeping in the underpass in Carl Schurz Park the other night when Barnett came walking by. He said he was hungry, asked Barnett for money. Barnett was rude to him, so he got pissed off and strangled him.”
“What’s the guy’s name?”
“Franco. Franky Franco.”
“Cute.”
“Yeah, sounded like bullshit to me, too. He had no ID on him, but that’s the name he’s been using at the shelters. He said he’s from Argentina.”
Louis rolled his eyes.
“Hey, I’m right with you, man,” Himoto said. “He has no priors, at least no priors under the name Franky Franco, or Frank Franco, or anything fuckin’ Franco. I’m waiting for a callback from Immigration, see if they got anything. He said he lived in Califormia for a while, so I got calls in, checking with the DMV, but got nada so far. Thing is, the guy doesn’t have a hint of an accent, speaks better English than I do.”
“So why the fuck do you believe his story? You don’t even know who he fuckin’ is.”
“Because right now there’s no reason not to believe him, that’s why. A guy walks in, confesses, I’m supposed to ignore it?”
“He’s schizo.”
“So schizos don’t kill people? David Berkowitz. Should’ve let him walk too?”
Louis rolled his eyes, then said, “Why do you believe this guy killed Barnett?”
“He gave me details. Gave a time of attack that fit with the ME’s—”
“So? That was on the news.”
“There were other details. Like I asked how much money he took from Barnett, right? And he said one hundred dollars. Barnett’s girlfriend told me she saw at least a few b
ills in Barnett’s wallet, so Franco’s story might hold up.”
“Yeah, and it might not,” Louis said. “What else?”
“He described how he killed him,” John said, “how long it took Barnett to die, and it all meshed. And the biggest thing—he passed the polygraph. Look, you asking me if I have my doubts? You bet your ass I do. I want the final report from the ME, I want to talk to people who know Franco and hear what they have to say, and I want to get the results of the psych eval. I also want to make sure Franky Franco is who he says he is. If the story still washes, I want to go public with it, see if we can get a witness who puts Franco at the scene.”
“Your case is still thin,” Louis said. “I mean, what do you got? A confession from a nutjob, that’s it. You got no physical evidence, no witnesses. You got zero, zilch.”
“That’s why I’m not going public with any of this yet.” John hated how Louis was laying into him. “I’m still looking into Barnett’s background, maybe there’s something there. But Franco passed the polygraph—what am I supposed to do, ignore that?”
“Psychos pass polygraphs all the time.”
“But you gotta think about motive. Guy can confess to anything, why this?”
“Crazy people do crazy shit,” Louis said. “Maybe he just wants to see his name in the newspaper.”
“You might be right, but it’s not like killing JFK. You think anybody’s gonna remember this case next year?”
“You will if you fuck it up,” Louis said.
John glared at Louis, then said, “Look, you want to take me off this thing that badly, go ahead. But if you think I’m gonna get on my knees and lick the shit off the bottoms of your shoes, you’re out of your mind.”
“I’m thinking about you, you stupid fuck,” Louis said. “You didn’t know this, but I was supposed to demote your ass last month. But I put my cojones on the line for you, and you better fuckin’ come through for me. I don’t know what’s going on lately, but you better get your shit together.”
Someone knocked and Louis shouted, “What?!”
Mike Grissom, a detective, opened the door and said, “The guy who was whacked in Carl Schurz—his parents are here.”
“I’ll be right there,” John said.
“He’s going now,” Louis said.
Grissom left.
As John got up, Louis added, “And next time you’re eating breakfast in your office, I want to see you doing something else at the same time. Multitasking. That’s what being a good cop’s all about.”
John wanted to tell Louis to go fuck himself, but managed to leave without saying anything. Man, though, reining it in around Louis and the other boneheads at the precinct was taking its toll. No wonder his doctor had him on pressure pills.
Heading toward his office, he braced himself, preparing what to say to Barnett’s parents. He’d talked to mothers and fathers who’d lost children before, and it was never pretty. They usually took their anger and frustration out on him, and getting ripped apart by grieving parents was about the last thing he needed right now.
In front of his office, John stopped and took a couple of breaths when a stocky man with messy gray hair came out and said, “You Detective Himoto?”
Boy, John wanted to say no. The guy was unshaven, wearing a wrinkled suit, and looked angry as hell.
“Yeah,” John said. “You must be—”
“Where is he? Where’s the son of a bitch who killed my son?”
“He’s not here. He’s downtown.”
Why am I here? John wondered. How come I’m not out on a fishing boat, going for fluke, or playing blackjack at goddamn Foxwoods?
Mrs. Barnett, looking like she’d had zero sleep, with streaks of mascara on her cheeks, came out of the office and said, “Where’s the killer? Where is he?”
“He’s not here,” John said.
“I want to see him, goddamn it,” Mr. Barnett said.
A few cops were looking over, including Delaney, the guy John had decked for making the sushi comment.
“Let’s talk in my office,” John said to the Barnetts.
“I don’t want to talk,” Mr. Barnett said. “I want to see the man who killed my son.”
“I understand your frustration.”
“Like hell you do.”
“Did he do it or not?” Mrs. Barnett asked.
John went by the Barnetts, into his office, figuring they’d follow him, and they did.
Mr. Barnett said, “Why won’t you tell us what the hell’s—”
“Look,” John said, cutting him off, “the investigation’s ongoing. The suspect’s undergoing a psych eval; he hasn’t even been booked. So both of you need to be patient…as patient as possible.”
“They told us he confessed,” Mrs. Barnett said. “That’s what they told us.”
“Who told you?” John said. “That information isn’t supposed to be public.”
“We’re not the public; we’re the fucking parents,” Mr. Barnett said. “I don’t have a right to know who killed my fucking son? Are you guys fucking kidding me?”
“The investigation’s ongoing,” John said again. “It’s true we have a confession, but we haven’t confirmed the suspect’s identity yet.”
“And why the fuck is that?”
“You’re really going to have to calm down, sir.”
“He’s not calming down,” Mrs. Barnett said.
“I know how you must feel,” Himoto said, straining to get the right tone.
“Oh, really?” Mrs. Barnett said. “Was your son murdered?”
Although John’s son was alive and well and living with his boyfriend in Chelsea, he had felt sonless for years.
“Of course I don’t know how you feel,” John said. “It was wrong of me to say that. But I sympathize with you and I want you to know I’m going to do everything I possibly can to solve this case as quickly as possible.”
“Yeah?” Mr. Barnett said. “Well, we want a real detective working on this.”
John glared at him and said, “What do you mean by that?”
“We understand that you’re not exactly the best detective in the New York City Police Department,” Mrs. Barnett said.
“Where’d you hear that?” John asked, trying to stay calm, but he was seething, ready to explode.
“An officer at the desk told us,” Mrs. Barnett said.
Fucking Delaney. John was going to kick the living shit out of that racist scumbag.
After taking a moment to collect himself, John said, “I’m on top of this case. I’m going to do everything in my power to bring the person or persons who committed this crime to justice. But you have to understand, it’s a process.”
“So it’s true then,” Mrs. Barnett said. “You are the worst detective in New York.”
“As I said,” John said, “I’m going to do everything in my pow—”
“We want someone else on this case,” Mr. Barnett said. “I want to speak to your supervisor.”
“Be my guest,” John said. “His name’s Deputy Inspector Louis Morales—his office is down the hall. But, trust me, he won’t take me off the case. He put me on it because he knows I’m the best man for the job. I’ve been working my ass off for nearly twenty-four hours straight and, trust me, I’m not gonna stop working till there’s a resolution. We have a suspect in custody right now and there’s a strong possibility that he killed your son. If we can confirm this, you’ll be the first to know. If not, I won’t stop searching until I find the guy. That I can promise you.”
John managed to keep his cool; he was good, all right. He had to be, because he knew if the Barnetts went to Louis and complained loud enough, there was an excellent chance that he would be taken off the case.
The Barnetts held John’s serious gaze for a few seconds, then exchanged looks. John wasn’t sure he’d won them over until Mr. Barnett said, “We want to be kept in the loop. Last night, driving here, we had no idea what the hell was going on. That’s not gonna happen a
gain.”
“I apologize for that,” John said. “Take my card. Call whenever you like or call Alyssa Hernandez, the woman at the desk right outside, and she can give you the latest.”
“Who’s the suspect you have in custody?” Mrs. Barnett asked. “Why hasn’t he been arrested?”
John didn’t tell them the suspect’s name, but he told them most of the other information he’d told Louis. When he was through, he could tell that he’d gained more of their confidence. Then he told them that he needed to get back to work and suggested that they check into a hotel and try to get some rest, if at all possible. Mr. Barnett even shook John’s hand before he and his wife left.
John immediately put in a call to Milton Friedman, the forensic psychologist who was interviewing Franky Franco. While he was waiting for the callback he got a call from Immigration, from an officer who had dealt with Franco. The guy didn’t supply any eye-opening info, but said as far as he recalled it was a very run-of-the-mill case. He did, however, give John the number of a woman, Carlita Wilkinson, Franco’s sister, who lived in Fort Myers, Florida. John was able to reach Carlita on the phone. She confirmed that she was Franco’s sister, but was uncooperative. She said Franco had been estranged from the family for years. She said she wasn’t surprised to hear he was in trouble and didn’t give “a flying fuck” what happened to him.
John immediately called Louis and told him the news.
“So he is who he says he is,” Louis said.
“Looks that way,” John said. “Of course, there’s the possibility that his sister’s covering for him. Then again, I doubt it. I mean, if what Franco says is true and he killed Barnett impulsively, it’s doubtful he let his sister know about it.”
“Gotta agree with you there,” Louis said.
“Still waiting for Psych to get back to me, but it looks like he’s been giving us nothing but the truth so far.”
“Hey, let’s hope so.”
John hung up, feeling antsy. Something about all this still didn’t feel right. If Franco did it, there had to be more to the story. Strangulation was typically a sexual, intimate way to kill somebody, and was usually associated with crimes of passion. John had worked on two cases in his career where people had been strangled—and one attempted strangulation—and they’d all had sexual components. During the interrogation, Franco had claimed to be straight, but he could’ve lied about his sexuality and there could’ve been a homoerotic motive for the killing.