by James Carol
Winter crushed the cigarette into the bowl and took out his cellphone. He found Mendoza’s cell number and hit dial. The call went straight through to voicemail, which was understandable. It had taken eight long days to hunt down Ryan McCarthy and she no doubt wanted to catch up on her sleep.
He tapped his cell phone against his chin, wondering what to do next. If he’d had her home number he would have called that. Unfortunately, she’d never given it to him. He knew she lived in Brooklyn, but he didn’t know where exactly, otherwise he’d just jump in a cab and drive out there. He went through everything in his head one more time, looking to see if there was any way he could do this on his own. There wasn’t. He needed Mendoza. Or, to be more accurate, he needed the resources she had access to. He tried her cell one more time, but it went straight to voicemail again. He hung up, cutting the message off in mid-flow, then punched in 911.
‘911, what’s your emergency?’
The voice was male. Geographically, the accent originated from somewhere in the Midwest.
‘I need you to get a message to Sergeant Carla Mendoza. She works out of the NYPD’s headquarters at One Police Plaza. Tell her she needs to call Jefferson Winter immediately. I need you to stress that this is urgent.’
‘Sir, this is 911. We don’t pass on messages.’
‘With all due respect, that’s exactly what you do. You take information from your callers then pass that information on to the appropriate party, whether that’s the cops, the medics or the fire department. This time I need you to relay a message to the cops.’
‘Sir, I must warn you that it’s a criminal offence to make hoax calls to 911.’
‘That’s good to hear. Okay, when you get hold of Sergeant Mendoza, she’s probably going to give you some sob story about how it’s the middle of the night and she doesn’t want to be disturbed. There will probably be some shouting, and I’d be surprised if there’s not a fair bit of cursing. Tell her that there’s been a murder and my prints are all over the murder scene. By the way, I’m at a diner called O’Neal’s over on the Lower East Side.’
Winter hung up, pushed the cellphone into his jeans pocket, and walked across to the counter to get a clean knife. He carried it back over to his table, stepping carefully over the body of the cook to avoid the blood. Then he sat down and started to eat.
The woman had left her newspaper behind. It was lying neatly folded on the table. Winter flicked it open and laid it down flat. The Hartwood Gazette was printed in a curly script at the top of the page, and the bold headline beneath read: COUPLE SLAIN IN BRUTAL MURDER. The byline belonged to someone called Granville Clarke. He took a closer look and saw how the pages had begun to darken and yellow with age. According to the header, the newspaper dated back to January six years ago.
To the right of the article was a picture of the dead couple. They were young, wholesome and smiling, their eyes filled with dreams of a bright future. This was a portrait rather than a snapshot and, although the smiles were suppressed and the pose staged, you could tell they’d been happy together. The caption named them as Lester and Melanie Reed.
According to the article, Lester and Melanie had been in their early twenties when they were murdered, and they’d lived in Hartwood their whole short lives. There was mention of the Monroe County Sheriff’s Department, which placed Hartwood in upstate New York. Lester had worked at the family store, while Melanie taught in the town’s elementary school. They’d only been married for a year. It was a life that had been halted before it had really gotten started.
There was more padding than substance to the story, and Winter had the impression that it must have been written in a hurry. Most likely the murders had coincided with the newspaper’s deadline. If that was the case then everything would have been in chaos and there wouldn’t have been time to dig deeper.
The newspaper had been left behind on purpose. If it had been the latest issue of The New York Times, then, yes, he could accept that it was an accident. But it wasn’t. This was an old newspaper. It wasn’t one that she’d just happened to have lying around. It had been left for a reason. Then there was the way that she’d kept tapping it while they were talking. She’d wanted him to notice it.
He quickly flicked through the rest of the pages. The only story of any note was the one about the murders. The other stories were the sort of thing you’d expect to find in a small-town newspaper. Births, marriages, deaths, local interest pieces. Which meant that she’d wanted him to see the story about the murders. But why do that? The only reason Winter could see was that she’d been involved in the murders. Given what she’d done to the cook it was a distinct possibility.
He took out his cell and did a quick Google search. The Hartwood Gazette didn’t have a website, but the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle did. Rochester was where the sheriff’s department was based, so it was the logical next place to go looking. Unfortunately, the online archive didn’t go back far enough to be of any help.
Winter was still eating when a police cruiser came roaring into the street. The siren was howling and the light bar painted the night red and blue. Two cops burst from the car, their guns already drawn. Neither one was Mendoza, which didn’t surprise him. The Seventh Precinct’s station house was only a couple of blocks away, so chances were that’s where they’d come from. Mendoza had to get here from Brooklyn so it would still be a while before she showed up.
The bell gave a dull clang and the door banged open. The guy who’d been driving entered first, covered by his partner. He looked at the body of the cook, looked at Winter.
‘On the ground! Hands behind your back!’
Winter shook his head. ‘Not going to happen.’
The cop gave him the look. It was an expression he was used to. Part disbelief, part perplexed, and part what the hell? This guy was smaller than his partner, but obviously older and more experienced. Mid-forties, black hair, blue eyes, and permanent frown lines etched into his forehead. According to the badge on his jacket his name was Pritchard. The name badge on the partner’s jacket read Collins. Winter cut off a piece of egg and popped it into his mouth. Pritchard raised his gun and aimed.
‘I said down on the floor.’
‘Or what? You’re going to shoot me?’ He shook his head again. ‘I don’t think so. The other thing I’m sure of is that you’re not about to come over here and drag me out of this chair. This is a crime scene and if you end up contaminating it, you’ll be in all sorts of trouble. I can’t contaminate it because I’m part of the scene, so, if you don’t mind, I’d like to finish my breakfast. Chances are I’m not going to be eating again any time soon, so I might as well eat now.’
He scraped some hash browns on to his fork and ate them. Pritchard was giving him the look again. He was staring, his mouth slightly open. He stood frozen for a moment longer, the gun still pointed at Winter’s chest, then he lowered it and conferred with Collins.
While they talked, Winter quickly finished his breakfast, washed it down with the last of his coffee, then wiped his mouth and hands on the serviette. He folded the serviette into a neat square, placed it on to the table, then rocked back in his seat. It was the pointlessness of the murder that got to him the most. It just wasn’t right. The cook should have been flipping burgers and singing along to Elvis for years to come, but instead, he was going to get measured for a box and consigned to the flames.
He stared at the two cops until they stopped talking and gave him their full attention. Without a word, he stood up and stepped over the cook’s body. Then he turned around, put his hands behind his back and waited for the handcuffs to be snapped on.
3
The handcuffs clicked tight and Pritchard recited the Miranda warning. Winter tuned him out. By his reckoning it would take about half an hour to track Mendoza down and get her here. Five minutes had passed since he called 911. Only twenty-five minutes to go. All he had to do was keep his head down and work the system.
Pritchard got to the end of h
is spiel and asked if he understood his rights. Winter said that he did, and Collins took this as his cue. He grabbed hold of Winter’s arm then marched him outside and bundled him into the back of the police cruiser. The car smelled like someone had vomited in it recently. The leather seats been wiped clean but a trace of the smell still lingered. The back of the car was separated from the front by a partition. The thick Perspex window made it easy for the cops up front to keep an eye on him, and the criss-crossed grille next to it had been put there so they could tell him to shut up if he caused trouble. The door handles and window winders had been removed.
A second police cruiser turned into the street, lights flashing, and skidded to a halt nose to nose with the car Winter was in. The Perspex distorted the view through the windshield but he could see enough to work out what was going on. He watched Pritchard and Collins walk over and shake hands with the two uniformed officers. Words were exchanged and there was some arm waving, a few laughs. Pritchard was clearly filling the new guys in on what had gone down in the diner.
The conversation wound up and Pritchard climbed into the driver’s seat and started the engine. He waited for Collins to shut the passenger door and get settled in, then hit the gas and reversed quickly back along the narrow street. Fifty yards later, he swung the wheel hard to the left and backed into an alleyway, throwing Winter across the rear seat. By the time he’d got himself upright they were facing the correct way and accelerating.
‘Can you believe what an asshole this guy is?’
Pritchard’s question wasn’t answered straightaway. Instead, Collins glanced over his shoulder and waited for Winter to meet his eye. ‘Yeah, what a douchebag.’
The name calling didn’t bother him. It was something he’d had plenty of experience with as a kid. After his father’s arrest, his mother had gone into flight mode in a futile attempt to escape the shame. Between the ages of eleven and seventeen they’d lived in fifteen cities in ten different states. All those new schools equated to a whole lot of name calling.
Pritchard and Collins moved on to talking about the Giants’ season and a couple of minutes later the car pulled into a parking space outside the Seventh Precinct’s red-brick station house. Despite the hour, the lights were burning bright. The rear door of the police cruiser swung open and Winter shuffled out. For a moment he just stood there breathing in the night air, the noise of the city filtering through the dark. By his reckoning, in twenty-two minutes he’d be a free man again.
‘Get moving!’
Pritchard gave him a shove and he started walking towards the entrance. It took twenty minutes to process him. Mugshots, fingerprints, paperwork. He kept one eye on the clock, and started dragging his heels as they approached the twenty-two minute mark. Still no Mendoza. At twenty-eight minutes he was led to a chair in an interview room. The door banged shut and he was left alone. Ending up in an interview room had not been a part of the plan.
Mendoza should have been here by now. Her name would have been flagged up by the 911 operative, and he’d been sure to give enough details to track her down, so where the hell was she? It wasn’t rocket science. A single telephone call to One Police Plaza would have confirmed that she existed. Personnel would have her home number on file, and someone would have rung it. Even if she was ignoring her cell, it would be hard to ignore a ringing landline. Unless, of course she’d taken it off the hook.
Winter had factored this possibility into his original calculations. If that had happened then a squad car would have been despatched, and someone would have knocked on the door until she answered. This time of the night, the Brooklyn Bridge would be clear of traffic. The roads would be clear, too. It should only take twenty minutes to get here from Brooklyn, maybe not even that.
He told himself to relax. She’d be here soon. It crossed his mind that she might be staying at a boyfriend’s house. Or a girlfriend’s. He wasn’t convinced though. All the time they’d been working together he’d seen absolutely no evidence that she was in a relationship with anyone of either sex. No quick furtive cellphone calls, no secret texting. She didn’t wear rings, so if she was married then she wasn’t advertising the fact. She was good at compartmentalising, that much was clear. Even so, Winter reckoned he would have picked up something. And even if he had missed it, her colleagues wouldn’t have. She worked in an office full of detectives. Someone would have noticed something. An environment like that, secrets were practically non-existent. If that was the case, then someone would know where to find her.
He sat down and did his best to get comfortable. His hands were still cuffed behind his back, his arms starting to go numb. He stretched in the chair and tried to shake some life back into them, then took a quick look around. The room was like a hundred other interview rooms he’d been in. Cheap scuffed linoleum tiles on the floor, cheap grey paint on the walls. The table was bolted to the floor and there were four chairs, two to a side facing each other. The accused and their lawyer would get the side facing the large one-way mirror, while the interviewers got to sit with their back to it.
There would be someone in the room behind the mirror. Probably more than one person. Winter had been on the other side of the interview table often enough to know how that one worked. Right now, they’d be studying him closely and thinking about the best strategies to employ to get the most out of the interview. They’d be getting their game plan together, and all the time they’d be looking for weaknesses that they could exploit.
He had a strong urge to get up and walk over to the mirror. It was something he’d seen countless times. Without exception, any suspect who wasn’t chained to the table or the floor would get up and go over to the mirror and stare into it. Most would tap the glass. Even though they’d seen enough cop shows to know the score, it was as though they needed to satisfy themselves that there was a room on the other side. That they were being watched.
As the minutes ticked by a trickle of anxiety wormed through his stomach. What if he’d overplayed his hand and the police couldn’t get hold of Mendoza? If that happened then he might be in trouble. The interview wouldn’t go on for ever. At some point it would end and he’d be transported down to the cells, and right now that prospect worried him more than anything else. He’d been in enough prisons to know a five-nine guy, weighing in at 140 pounds with no self-defence skills whatsoever was going to have a rough time.
Right now, he wasn’t just the number-one suspect, he was the only suspect. And that was the problem. Why would the police go looking for the real killer if they already had someone in custody? It all came back to taking the path of least resistance. People rarely went out of their way to create more work for themselves. And if you’d pulled the night shift, then that was definitely going to be the case.
Winter took a deep breath and tried not to think about it. There was nothing he could do to affect the outcome, so there was no point worrying. All he could do was wait and see what happened next. With or without Mendoza, the truth would eventually come out. He shuffled around in his seat to get comfortable, shook his arms again to get the blood flowing. Then he shut his eyes and counted off the seconds.
4
The door swung open and a black guy entered. Everything about him was average. Medium height, medium build, and one of those faces you wouldn’t look at twice. The lack of a uniform marked him out as a detective. His suit was off-the-rack and didn’t fit particularly well. It was navy blue and crumpled. His tie was red and sitting slightly crooked. There was a sheet of paper and a pen in his left hand, a thin folder and a small digital recorder in his right.
The detective took the seat opposite him, placed the folder and the recorder on the table, pressed the record button, then went through the preliminaries. Date, time, the fact that Winter was here on suspicion of murder. He gave his name as Darryl Hitchin, his rank as sergeant.
Hitchin pushed the sheet of paper across the table, and Winter leant forward so he could read through it. Slowly. It was a standard Miranda waiver f
orm. He’d seen plenty of these, so many that he could have recited what was written there by heart. Even so, he read through it like it was the most important document he’d ever seen. He rattled the handcuffs against the chair back, drawing Hitchin’s attention to them
‘If you want me to sign this, you’re going to have to take these off.’
‘Sure, but they’re going straight back on afterwards.’
‘Seriously? Do I look dangerous?’
‘Looks can be deceptive.’
The detective was acting cool but Winter wasn’t fooled. Inside he must have been celebrating. He had a murder suspect who was willing to be questioned without a lawyer being present. That didn’t happen every day. Winter had contemplated asking for one so he could send them out to find Mendoza. The problem was that it was the middle of the night. If the lawyer was delayed then he might be moved down to the cells. Issues of personal safety aside, that would create another delay. The deeper into the system he went, the longer it was going to take to get out. Every minute spent dealing with this bullshit was a minute wasted. It was a hassle he could do without. Time that would be better spent doing something constructive, like finding out more about the Reed murders.
Hitchin came around the table and unlocked the handcuffs. It was good to have them off, albeit briefly. The steel had been pressing uncomfortably against his bones and had left indentations in his skin. Winter rubbed his wrists then picked up the pen and signed the form. Instead of putting his arms behind his back, he held them out to the front. Hitchin just stared at him without saying a word.