by Beverly Bird
“Christian Benami took an All-City taxi from his town house to the Ball at 7:27 that evening,” she said triumphantly. “That’s when the guy picked him up. A Checker took him home again at nineteen minutes past twelve.”
“Picked him up at nineteen after, or dropped him off then?” Gunner demanded.
“Picked him up. They time the point of origination.”
“Wait a minute.” Gunner grabbed the Benami file off the corner of their desk. “Wait just one damn minute here. He said he got home shortly before one.”
“Yes.” Tessa grinned widely.
“He tripped up. Here it is.” He read the report of the original district officers and the 9-1-1 transcripts. “He called to report Daphne’s hanging at one minute after one in the morning.”
“I couldn’t remember exactly, but I thought it was somewhere in that neighborhood.”
“Even if he walked, even if he strolled home, he would have gotten home within ten minutes, by twelve-thirty at the latest. There’s not so much pedestrian traffic at that time of night.”
“And he didn’t walk. The driver took him directly home.”
“So he would have been inside no later than twenty-five after twelve.”
“Right. And you can see into the dining room from the entryway, so he couldn’t have missed her when he came in, not easily. First of all, the table was pushed back and that was odd. And second, she would have been dangling right there from the chandelier.”
“Yet he waited over half an hour to call it in. I’ll be damned. So he’s not that brilliant and cunning.”
“There’s something else. This guy...” Tessa’s voice trailed off as she flipped through her notes. “Dhiry Patel, with Tri-State Taxi,” she read. “He saw a man matching Christian’s description—in evening clothes no less—walking up Eighteenth Street right around nine o’clock. I lucked out to have found him so quickly—he was working the holiday yesterday. As soon as I described Benami he thought of the guy he had seen.”
Gunner looked up into her face slowly. His heart kicked. “Why didn’t you call me with this last night, for God’s sake?” Stupid question, he thought immediately.
Because I thought I’d be working this by myself from now on. Because I was having a hard enough time getting you off my mind without hearing your voice. “I didn’t find out about Patel until he came into work at around midnight,” she answered. “He was on the graveyard shift last night.”
Gunner let it go. “Well, we’ve got to get him in here, get a statement from him.”
“He’ll be here at nine, as soon as he gets off work and can get over here.”
Gunner swore.
“What?”
“I’ve got an appointment at Commercial Savings And Loan at nine. To go over their list of safe-deposit box rentals.”
She realized with a perversely unpleasant feeling that they really had worked just fine without each other’s cooperation.
“So change it,” she suggested quietly. “You can do that this afternoon.”
“Yeah, I’d rather take this taxi driver’s statement and cram it down Baum’s throat myself.”
Tessa hesitated. “I thought we could get Jesse to do that.”
Gunner’s face hardened. “This is our baby, Tess.”
“Don’t be unreasonable,” she snapped. “If we’ve got strings dangling in front of our faces, it’s silly not to pull them.”
“I don’t need the damn D.A.! I’ve been getting compliance orders and convictions on my own for six years now. No strings.”
“You’re being ridiculous.” And then she realized how good, how very good, it felt to argue with him over something so blessedly impersonal.
“Four days ago, it was macho,” he snapped.
“Well, you’re that, too. Ridiculously macho.” She took a deep breath. “Okay, we’ll compromise.”
He looked at her warily. “How so?”
“First, we’ll take Patel’s statement.”
“Okay.”
“Then we’ll take it over to Jesse.”
“Not okay. How is that a compromise?”
“Will you just listen a minute? While Jesse’s seeing Baum, we can cover the banks closest to Benami’s home, see if we can come up with something there. Then, when we’re armed with the taxi driver’s statement, the compliance order, the 9-1-1 report that we know he called in much too late and anything else we can come up with at the banks—”
“Don’t forget the knife,” he interrupted suddenly. “Angela called this morning. There were traces of skin cells on that knife, so he used it to coerce her.”
Tessa thought that English would say that Daphne had cut herself cooking. But she knew Daphne had never cooked a meal in her life. Her heart rate picked up.
“That too, then,” she agreed. “Anyway, when we have all that, we can haul Benami’s backside down here and you can put the screws to him. It just makes more sense to organize our time so we can get to him as soon as possible.”
Gunner was silent. She could tell he was thinking about it.
“Are you still feeling mean?” she asked.
He flashed her a look. It didn’t go right to her face. It started somewhere around her knees, where her legs were crossed as she sat on the desk. It danced to her hip, up over her breasts, and by the time it got to her face, she was breathless and blushing.
“More than you know, sweetheart,” he said quietly.
Their plan didn’t quite come off without a hitch.
Taking Patel’s statement went fine, but everything went awry after that. They were able to ascertain that the cabdriver remembered seeing Benami because he had been on his way to pick up someone else for another formal function. Patel had had a flat and traffic had been a bear. He’d been late, and when he saw the guy dressed in evening clothes, he’d thought it was his own fare, disgusted with waiting, making the walk on foot.
“This is great,” Gunner muttered after the man left and they went back to their desk.
Tessa nodded. “Things are really breaking.” She hesitated. “I want this guy, Gunner. I want him so badly. I don’t want to leave anything to chance. Jesse’ll get that compliance order. With any luck, the judge will even allow us to hold Benami here until the blood results come back. Even if he doesn’t, we can stall. Then maybe we can even charge him today.”
“Yeah.” He still seemed disgruntled. “It’ll help if we have something from one of the banks, too.” But they’d move on the bastard even without that, he decided. They had enough now.
Tessa nodded. “I’ll take Patel’s statement over to my brother myself, and you can get started on the banks.” She’d been thinking about that since they’d finished with Patel. It would send them in separate directions.
She was going to get some lines back here if it killed her.
She was trying. She was trying so very hard to be professional about this. And she needed to part ways with him for a little while if only to get her breath back. She had resigned herself to their partnership for the time being. She hadn’t resigned herself to being in Gunner’s intriguing company every minute of every day until this case was wrapped up.
Gunner picked up the list of the banks he had made. There were sixteen branch offices within a reasonable distance of Benami’s house. It was going to be long, tedious work, he thought, and they probably wouldn’t finish it by the time her brother got the compliance order. They’d have to study every name on each rental list, then check out anyone with a name that sounded even remotely like it could be Benami—pretty much anyone with the initials C.B. Or D.B. Or D.C., for Daphne Carlson. Then, assuming they found something, they’d need a search warrant to get into the box. That meant Baum again.
“Kennery should be willing to give us extra legs for this,” he muttered. “We’re close now.”
He stood up and moved around behind her. Tessa stiffened. If he noticed, he made no comment. He only took his jacket from the back of the chair. Then he paused to scribbl
e the name and address of the bank closest to Jesse Hadley’s office.
“You take this one. We’ll meet back here as soon as each of us is done. If Kennery won’t give me extra legs, I’ll quit anyway and come back here by three.”
He went to the door, shrugging into his jacket as he walked. It settled over his shoulders and hugged them. Tess watched him go, then she went after him impulsively. She stopped in the doorway and watched him walk down the hall. His shoulders dipped a little with each stride. He fairly swaggered. Oh, yes, he was cocky, she thought. And arrogant. And macho. Strong and forgiving and kind.
Her throat tightened and she closed her eyes. She wasn’t sure she’d have been so magnanimous with a partner who’d just tried to dump her.
She turned to go back to their desk to call her brother, then she realized that everyone who remained in the office was watching her again.
“Will you guys please get lives of your own?” she cried angrily. Then she heard her own shrill voice and sat down hard.
She was out of control.
Chapter 15
Jesse waved her into his office. He was on the phone, pacing while he talked, and Tessa settled down in a chair to wait.
They’d both inherited their mother’s black hair. But Jesse—thank God—had been the one to get the Hadley nose. When she’d been a child, Tessa had just called it big. But the older he got, the more Jesse grew into it. Now it was aquiline, strong.
“What’ve you got?” he asked suddenly, hanging up. Tessa handed over a copy of Dhiry Patel’s statement.
“I’ll be damned,” Jesse murmured, glancing over it, sitting again. “Good work. At least it’s good enough for Baum.”
She heard what he didn’t say. “But not for the grand jury.”
“Not yet. I might get past them—the burden of proof in that court isn’t heavy. I’d just have to show probable guilt. But why bother when English would chew this up and spit it out at trial without anything else to back it up?”
Tessa nodded. Jesse’s reputation was stellar, his indictment and conviction rates better than those of any of his predecessors, because he knew when to press charges and when to decline.
“We’re going to bring Benami in for questioning this afternoon,” she told him. “With a match on the blood type, we can at least start the wheels turning.”
Jesse picked up the phone to call Baum, then he put it down again. “You look like hell, Tess.”
She grimaced. “Thanks.”
“I thought you were doing okay lately. What gives?”
John Gunner. She stood up. “I’m just getting my sea legs back. I lost my stamina up in the Fifth.”
Once again, Jesse was too busy to do anything but accept her explanation at face value. She went back to the door and Jesse gave her a thumbs-up sign. He was already talking to Baum’s secretary.
The vice president of the bank that Gunner had given her was not cooperative. It took Tessa the better part of forty-five minutes to convince him to let her see their list of safe-deposit box renters. She commandeered one of the privacy rooms and sat down to study it. They were in the order of sequential box numbers, not listed alphabetically.
William Connicella, Frank Mahon, Laurie Arnold. None of them seemed to have any link to Benami at all. Briefly she considered that the man might have chosen a name out of the blue, a name they wouldn’t catch on to. But no, that would ruin the clue. If Gale Storm was right, then there had to be a hint somewhere.
Of course, that didn’t necessarily mean that the hint pertained to a safe-deposit box. But where else would Benami hide something that he didn’t want to keep in his house? The possibilities were endless, she realized sinkingly. It could be anything from an apartment he might have rented to a hole he’d dug in the ground.
She went for a cup of coffee and returned to go over the list a second time.
After he left Baum, Jesse Hadley strode aggressively into his office and flung his briefcase on the desk. He grabbed the phone to call the Homicide Unit.
His secretary strolled in and dropped a paper bag on his desk while he held on. He held up a finger to indicate that she should wait.
Roger Kennery finally came on the line. Jesse turned to look out the window as he identified himself.
“I’ve got that blood compliance order on Christian Benami,” he told him shortly. “I’m sending the original over to the Ninth District so they can serve it on him. I’ll fax you a copy.” He hung up and looked across his desk again.
His secretary was gone.
Damn it. He didn’t have time to be chasing these people all over the building. Jesse knew he was a tough taskmaster. God knew he went through enough help—secretaries especially—but he made it a point never to ask anyone to do anything he wouldn’t roll up his shirtsleeves and do himself.
He popped open the paper bag as he stepped around the desk, grabbed half of the sandwich inside, and bit into it as he headed back to the outer office. Then he winced and coughed and veered for the men’s room to spit the bite out.
Mustard. Damn it. He was allergic to mustard. Where was that woman’s head? Then, to be fair, he considered that she’d worked for him less than a week now. Maybe he’d just never mentioned it to her.
“Where’s Jeanie?” he demanded of the first person he spotted.
“Lunch. She just left.”
Jesse swore and went back to his office for an antacid.
Tessa finally gave up on the bank list at a quarter to three. She was firmly convinced by then that Christian Benami was not any of the people who had rented a safe-deposit box with Penn National, at least not at this branch.
She tried to catch a cab back to the office, but the city was alive and bustling, the way it always was right after a holiday. She ended up walking, and she didn’t make it back to the Homicide office until three-thirty.
Gunner was nowhere to be found.
She went to Kennery’s office. He was on the phone. She sought out Becky. “Anything going on?”
“Your brother called. Baum finally coughed up that compliance order.”
Tessa broke into a grin. “Yes!” she exclaimed.
“A couple of officers from the Ninth are out trying to serve it on Benami right now.”
“Have you heard from Gunner?” Tessa asked excitedly.
Becky shook her head.
Where was he? Then she thought she knew. He’d probably gotten wrapped up in the bank lists and had lost track of the time.
Then she frowned. No, he wouldn’t do that, Tessa thought. Not when he knew there was every possibility they’d be bringing Benami in for questioning today. Had something else broken, some new angle? Had he run off impulsively to chase it down without even leaving a message for her as to what was going on? Temper swished inside her.
“Hey, Tess,” Melanie Kaminski’s called from behind her. She whipped around to acknowledge the other detective.
“Igor’s fax is spilling out paper left and right. It’s all got your name on it.”
Tessa’s heart tripped. She forgot Gunner and literally ran to the computer room.
A moment later her pulse was roaring. The first page that had come through was a newspaper clipping from Lincoln, Nebraska. The picture was grainy, and the fax transmission hadn’t improved upon it any. She carried it to a place of better light and studied it.
“Oh, my God,” she whispered aloud. It was Benami. It was definitely Christian Benami.
He was being led into a building in handcuffs. The photographer must have called his name, or done something to snag his attention, because he’d looked back over his shoulder in the direction of the camera at the exact moment the picture was taken. His expression was one of angry surprise. But it was him—the perfectly coiffed blond hair, the pretty-boy looks. Tessa’s eyes flew down to the caption beneath the photograph.
Conrad Benning.
He had called himself Conrad Benning in Nebraska. Maybe it was his real name. Maybe it was another alias. But it su
re as the devil had nothing to do with Witness Protection. The caption said that he was about to be booked for Murder One for the premeditated death of his wife, Laurina Arnold Benning.
She knew that name. Laurina Arnold. She’d heard it recently. No, she realized. Not Laurina. Laurie. Laurie Arnold had been one of the names on Penn National’s safe-deposit box list.
She snatched up the rest of the fax pages. Where was Gunner? She darted into Kennery’s office, waving the pages.
“We’ve got him!” she cried. “Can you call Baum and get a search warrant over the phone?” She told him about the safe-deposit box, then she thrust most of the pages at him. She kept the one with the detective’s name and number for herself.
“You want me to play devil’s advocate here?” he asked, looking down at what she had given him.
“Of course.” She stopped in the door and looked back at him.
“All you’ve got is extradition to Nebraska.”
She shrugged. She’d take it.
“They’ll incarcerate him there.”
“And if he ever gets parole, they’ll send him back here,” she said pointedly. “Either way, he’s no longer a free man, and he won’t be a free man for a long time to come. He won’t be able to hurt anyone else.”
Kennery nodded. “True. At the moment, however, the guys from the Ninth District still haven’t found him to serve the compliance order on him.”
Tessa’s heart slugged. Did she imagine it, or did Kennery look worried for a second?
“It’s after four o’clock on a Wednesday. Can’t expect him to be sitting at home waiting for us,” Kennery said.
“No,” she said thoughtfully. “I suppose not.” Actually, the delay was probably good, she decided. She wanted—needed—Gunner here when Benami arrived. How had she ever thought she could handle this case by herself? Her good-cop routine, the one she was most adept at, wouldn’t shake Benami up enough to get results before Basil English arrived to protect him. Once a suspect’s attorney was present, all tactics, the whole tempo of questioning, changed. It became wary, more careful, less productive.