Kill Again

by Neal Baer

  “Rosa Sanchez was my patient,” answered Claire. “They sent me in here because I told them you didn’t kill her.”

  Welch laughed. “You’re full of shit,” he said. “They wanna string me up, not let me go.”

  “I answered your question, so I’d appreciate it if you would answer mine.”

  The authority in her voice wiped the smile off Welch’s face. “You wanna know how I can explain all this so-called evidence? Either the cops made it up or someone’s setting me up.”

  “For the sake of argument, let’s rule out the cops. If they wanted to put this on you, they never would have let me in here. Can you think of anyone who’d go to this much trouble to set you up?”

  He glanced up, as if he wanted to trust her. “How the hell do I know?” he asked pleadingly. “Just like I told them before, the things they say I did to this woman ... I wouldn’t even imagine how . . .” He trailed off, seeing the flat look on Claire’s face.

  “I believe you,” she said.

  “Bullshit!” Welch cried.

  “If you give me a minute I’ll prove it.”

  “How?”

  “Emigrant hasta.”

  “Huh? Emigrant what?”

  “You heard me.”

  Welch pounded his fist on the table. “You trying to trick me here?”

  “I want you to tell me what emigrant hasta means.”

  “It doesn’t mean anything!” Welch cried. “I may be an ex-con but I’m not illiterate. It doesn’t even make sense!”

  Claire slapped a pad on the table, the words written on the top sheet. As forcefully as any cop in an interrogation, she shoved the paper across the table. “Dammit, you tell me what those words mean. Right now!”

  Welch eyed the paper, terrified that if he answered incorrectly, this quiz would cost him the rest of his life in prison.

  “Why are you doing this to me?”

  Claire snatched the pad off the table. “Thank you, Mr. Welch,” she said.

  “Wait, where are you going?” Welch asked. “Thank you? What does that mean? You can’t just leave me here. Tell them I want a lawyer.”

  She turned back and softened her demeanor. “You’re not going to need a lawyer,” she assured him.

  “But she was your patient. You wanna see me fry like the rest of them.”

  “Only if you killed her, Mr. Welch,” said Claire, opening the door. “And now I know for sure you didn’t.”

  She closed the door and walked back to the viewing room, where she found Nick standing by himself. “Where’d everybody go?” she asked.

  “Summoned to the chief of detectives’ office,” replied Nick.

  Claire looked at her watch. “At five in the morning?”

  “Chief’s an early riser. And this isn’t their only case.”

  “Are you satisfied?” Claire asked him.

  “I’ve gotta believe that if he knew what those words meant he would’ve let on,” he replied. “There would’ve been some recognition, even if the rest of his performance was just an act. Guy smooth enough to butcher three women would’ve wanted us to pay homage to his enormous ego and this douche bag barely has one. Am I close?”

  “Right on target,” she said.

  Nick turned to the monitor, seeing Welch’s face back in his hands, but this time wracking from spasms of sobbing. “I don’t get it,” he said. “The boss was right. The evidence was circumstantial. But the good kind of circumstantial.”

  “Maybe a little too good,” Claire suggested.

  “You’re going all psych on me,” chided Nick. “I thought you were the scientific one.”

  “I was,” said Claire, walking away from the monitors. “I’m not sure what I am anymore.”

  His gaze followed her. “What does that mean?”

  She stopped and closed her eyes for a moment. “I used to think the world made sense. That everything could be explained with facts and figures, in an empirical way. But lately there are a lot of things I can’t explain.”

  “You mean like world hunger and war?”

  She was about to answer him when Wilkes burst into the room.

  “We’ve gotta go,” he said. “You too, Doc.”

  “Wait, Inspector, you need to listen to me,” she said. “Mr. Welch is innocent—”

  “I know that, Doctor.”

  “How can you know?” Claire asked. “You weren’t even here—”

  “Patrol just found another freshly planted bag of bones out in Brooklyn,” the inspector replied. “And we’ve had eyes on Mr. Welch for more than eighteen hours. It can’t be him.”

  Claire and Nick followed Wilkes to the elevators.

  “Are we just gonna leave Welch in there?” Claire asked.

  “He just went from being our lead suspect to material witness,” Wilkes said, hitting the elevator call button repeatedly. “If you’re right and Welch was set up, he’s got a bull’s-eye on his back from the guy who’s really doing all this killing.”

  “He keeps doing it, we’re gonna have trouble keeping it under wraps,” said Nick.

  “Oh, it’s not a secret anymore, Nicky,” lamented Wilkes. “The sonuvabitch just unzipped his fly. Called Channel Three News and led ’em right to the scene.”

  The sun was just coming up as Savarese sped out of Manhattan in Wilkes’s Charger, early enough to avoid rush hour on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and the Belt Parkway. Doing a modest eighty miles an hour with lights and siren, they made it to the still crime-ridden East New York section of the borough of Kings in less than half an hour.

  Up ahead they could see a crowd of people being held back by a bunch of cops and yellow police tape strung across Linwood Avenue. Many of the onlookers wore pajamas, as if they’d been evacuated from their homes. TV news reporters and photographers moved among them, their “live” trucks with masts raised beaming video back to their stations.

  “Just in time for the goddamned morning news,” Wilkes complained. “That’s no accident.”

  “Neither is the location,” Savarese added as a patrol cop waved their car through the police line. “This guy’s really shoving it up our asses this time.”

  “The location?” asked Claire, just as lost in Brooklyn as she’d be in Baghdad.

  “Seven-five Precinct’s a block and a half away,” he said. “He’s trying to prove his point.”

  Wilkes let out a sick laugh. “Yeah, that we’re a bunch of morons. We can walk from here, Tony.”

  Savarese stopped the car behind a phalanx of police cars, fire trucks, the medical examiner’s van, and the Crime Scene Unit’s new mobile command post, a vehicle the size of a coach bus that contained a sophisticated laboratory.

  Exiting the car, they saw the charred remnants of a two-story, tan brick apartment building. ME Ross emerged from its basement ahead of two attendants wheeling a gurney topped with a rubber body bag. Presumably, it contained the bones.

  The normally unflappable pathologist looked as if he’d literally met a ghost. Nick had never seen Ross spooked before.

  “You okay?” he asked Ross with real concern.

  “Whoever this sicko is, he’s getting on my nerves,” Ross replied, uncharacteristically in no mood for jokes. He only briefly glanced at Claire, no doubt assuming she was another cop.

  “Anything you can tell us, Doc?” Wilkes asked.

  “Same shit, different day,” Ross returned. “Once again dimensions of the pelvic girdle indicate the bones are female,” Ross reported. “Length of the long bones confirms an adult. They’re clean of any soft tissue, they’re yellowish in color suggesting they were boiled like the first set, and they were dumped in the same kind of burlap bag the others were placed in by Yankee Stadium.”

  “Anything in there with ’em?” asked Wilkes. “You know, like another coffee cup, receipt, maybe a business card with the psycho’s name and address?”

  “Not this time,” Ross lamented. “If you were him, would you make the same mistake twice?”

&nb
sp; “It wasn’t a mistake,” Nick said. “He didn’t have anyone else to pin it on.”

  “And Jonah Welch doesn’t have a clue who he is,” added Claire.

  Wilkes turned to her. “Then maybe we should send you back to headquarters with Nicky so you can jog his memory some more.”

  “Are you asking me or telling me?” Claire replied, her voice tinged with annoyance.

  “Asking,” Wilkes admitted with respect. “You had him in the palm of your hand. If he’s gonna open up, he’ll do it with you. And we need him to, Doc. Because unless this guy left a sign leading us to him, which he’s too smart to do, that poor slob Welch is our only shot.”

  CHAPTER 13

  Claire and Nick entered the interview room at One Police Plaza less than an hour later to find Jonah Welch squirming in his chair. He would have been bouncing off the walls if he wasn’t handcuffed to the table.

  “What do I gotta do so you’ll believe me?” he pleaded. “I swear on my parents’ graves, I didn’t kill anybody.”

  Nick went right up to Welch and stared down into his ruddy face. The prisoner recoiled, beads of sweat tumbling down his forehead from sparse tufts of gray, thinning hair sprouting from around his crown. He appeared to think Nick was about to hit him.

  But instead, Nick removed a small key from his pocket and unlocked the handcuffs. That scared Welch even more.

  “What’s going on here?” he asked.

  “You’re no longer a suspect in this case,” Nick told him as he looped the cuffs over his belt.

  Welch sat in momentary disbelief. “Are you kidding me? This is some kind of huge mistake?”

  “Yes, and it’s our mistake, Mr. Welch,” answered Claire. “But one we were meant to make.”

  Welch stood up, indignant. “What the hell does that mean?”

  “It was just like you said. You were set up,” Nick said, stepping up to block Welch in case he tried to move. He could feel the man’s hot breath, which smelled like sauerkraut. Welch dropped back into his chair like a frightened child.

  “Set up? Why? By who?”

  “That’s what we need your help with, genius,” said Nick.

  Gently, treating him like the victim he now was, Claire pulled another chair and sat facing him.

  “I know you told me you couldn’t think of anyone who’d want to hurt you this way,” she said. “But we really need you to try. More specifically, who would want to hurt you?” she asked.

  “I have no idea,” Welch said.

  Nick lowered himself into the remaining chair and took on a more empathetic tone. “Look, pal. Whoever this guy is, he’s smart. So far he’s been getting his jollies playing us for chumps. But nobody concocts an elaborate frame like this unless he wants the victim—that being you—to hang.”

  “Please understand,” Claire continued. “Detective Lawler and I aren’t trying to trick you into anything. He arrested you because the evidence was solid. The person who killed these three women may not stop at them.”

  “What . . . what do you mean?” Welch asked, not sure he wanted to hear the answer.

  “We’re putting you under protective custody,” Nick explained. “Remember, this guy has it in for you. If he finds out he failed, that we didn’t buy the setup, he’s gonna try something else to get you one way or the other.”

  Now Welch was sitting at attention. “You’re not gonna let that happen, right?”

  “We’re gonna put you up in a nice hotel with a protective detail twenty-four-seven. On the city’s dime.”

  Welch relaxed only slightly. “Sounds like a good deal,” he admitted.

  “It beats your place in Flatbush and it sure as shit beats two decades in Greenhaven. But it’s still a prison. Until we find this guy and neutralize him.”

  Welch put his head down again like there was no way to win. “I want to help you, I really do. But you can’t get blood from a stone.”

  “We’re not asking for blood,” Claire assured him, “just a little sweat. And it’s just as much in your interest as it is in ours.” She stopped to let this sink in.

  When Welch’s head came back up, he looked back and forth between them. “What do you want me to do?” he asked.

  “Just think,” answered Claire. “As hard as you can.”

  “Who’d wanna see you fry?” Nick asked. “Someone threaten you in court after your trial? Maybe a family member of your victim? Or someone you did time with?”

  “I . . . I don’t know,” Welch stammered, confused. Nick could almost see the thoughts tracking through Welch’s brain as he struggled to remember all the run-ins he’d had, all the people he’d pissed off. Nick felt sorry for him.

  “Does this mean I can go?” Welch asked Claire.

  “Just sit tight, Jonah,” Nick said. “Think some more. We’ll leave the cuffs off and one of our detectives is gonna get you some chow. We’ll set up the hotel as soon as I get back. But there’s one thing we gotta check out first.”

  “What is that?” asked Welch.

  “Your car,” Nick said. “I asked you about it before and you said you haven’t driven it in weeks. We just need to confirm you’re telling the truth. The quicker you give me permission to search it, Jonah, the faster we get you out of this room.”

  Welch didn’t hesitate. “Just give me something to sign,” he said.

  “Great. Now, you didn’t hide the damn thing, did you?” Nick asked. “Because we’ve had the local precinct looking all night and they can’t find it.”

  Nick finally asked Welch a question he could answer.

  “There’s a gas station at the corner of Empire Boulevard and Bedford Avenue,” Welch said. “I pay the owner by the month to park it there.”

  In less than half an hour, Detective Simms drove Nick and Claire into Brooklyn and down Flatbush Avenue to Empire Boulevard. The gas station in question was a run-down old dump that hadn’t actually sold gas in decades. But Nick wasn’t leaving anything to chance. He’d asked a friend in the 71st Precinct detective squad to head over and confirm the car was there, and to guard it until he arrived. He did the same with the Crime Scene Unit, asking them to show up in an unmarked vehicle so as not to attract any attention. He also gave explicit instructions that no one touch the car until he got there.

  When they pulled up, it was clear that they had honored Nick’s requests. The detective from the 71st Precinct waved from the driver’s seat of his own car and drove away as Nick, Claire, and Simms exited theirs and Crime Scene Detective Aitken approached.

  “Thanks for the low profile,” Nick said, grateful for the absence of yellow crime-scene tape.

  “Figured it went with the stealth mobile,” Aitken quipped, gesturing to the crappy, old, unmarked Chevy he’d driven over. “Your perp’s ride beats the hell out of mine.”

  “So it was sitting here the whole time?” Simms asked.

  Aitken led them to the far side of the gas station’s building. “Yeah, but I can see why patrol didn’t spot it. I had trouble finding it when I got here,” he said. “Check it out.”

  They passed the garage bays and then they understood. Six battered vehicles sat parked in tandem beside the garage. Only a close look would have revealed Welch’s black Crown Vic jammed against a fence behind a rusted, sixties-era bread truck.

  “I asked the guy who owns the place,” said Aitken. “He parked that bread truck there a week and a half ago and hasn’t moved it since.”

  “Could’ve told you that just from the dirt,” Nick observed, indicating the buildup of street muck around the truck’s wheels. “Why don’t you get a couple of shots before we slither in there?”

  Aitken headed off, passing a fiftyish, silver-haired man heading toward them, wearing a mechanic’s coveralls. He moved the two cars parked beside the bread truck and Welch’s Ford.

  “No question about it,” Claire observed, getting a close look at the Crown Vic’s tires. “This car’s hasn’t gone anywhere.”

  “We got the keys?” asked S
imms.

  Aitken held them up. “We got a warrant?” he asked.

  “Better,” replied Nick, holding up a piece of paper. “Written permission from the owner.”

  Aitken tossed him the keys. He pulled on a pair of gloves, unlocked the driver’s door of the Ford, and took a look inside. The interior of the car, though worn, was remarkably clean. Aitken opened the rear driver’s side door and inspected the backseat.

  “I’ll get it back to the lab so I can luma-light it for blood,” he said, “but I don’t see or smell anything that would indicate he had a dead body in here.”

  “We haven’t opened the trunk yet,” Nick reminded him. He clicked the auto-release inside the car, maneuvered his way to the back, and took a look. “Just as clean as the interior,” he said.

  “If a body had been in here, we’d know it,” said Simms, joining him.

  “Can’t smell ammonia or cleaning solution,” Nick said, lowering the lid of the trunk.

  Claire thought about how Nick relied on his sense of smell ever since he’d begun to lose his eyesight.

  Nick stopped, his hand on the trunk lid, staring at the back of it. “Terry, you got a magnifying glass in your bag of tricks?” he asked.

  “What’s wrong, Sherlock?” asked Claire, standing behind them.

  “Sure,” said Aitken, producing one and holding it out to Nick, who waved him off.

  “No. Take a look at this plate and tell me what you see.”

  Aitken did as he was asked. A second later, he looked up. “Fresh marks around the screws,” the CSU detective said. “You’re right.”

  “Right about what?” asked Claire, baffled.

  Nick stepped back to give Aitken working room and turned to Claire. “First thing we look for when we suspect a car’s stolen is whether the license plates were changed. You check to see if the plates are cleaner or dirtier than the rest of the car, whether the screws are shiny, like someone used a screwdriver on them, or whether there are fresh marks on the plate from where the screws were recently turned.”

  Claire was amazed. “You’re saying instead of taking the car, whoever murdered Rosa stole Jonah Welch’s plates?”