“Okay. I’m sucking myself into other homicides sitting here. I don’t want to get deeper into any other cases until after we finish Vinita Ortiz.”
“Perfect. But first, I’m starving. And I want to get out of this building.” She flapped open the sides of her jacket. “I’m broiling alive in this suit. If you’re good, I’ll buy you lunch today.”
“I’m thinking steak.”
She rolled her eyes. “I’m thinking cheeseburgers at Tony’s”
“Even better.” The magnifying glass was unceremoniously thrown into his top drawer.
Lauren grabbed the car keys off her desk. “Ready?”
She noticed Reese’s eyes suddenly fixed on the door. She looked over. Mark was standing in the doorway. “Can I help you?” Reese asked. Mark had disappeared from her life years before Reese entered it. The man at the door in the expensive suit was a complete stranger to him.
Mark looked past Reese to Lauren. “I’m here to see Detective Riley.”
Reese looked over to her for a cue. She tossed him the car keys. “I’ll meet you downstairs.”
“You sure?”
“Positive.”
Reese brushed past Mark on his way out, looking him up and down as he did. Once he was down the hall, Mark stepped into the office. “Is this a bad time?”
Lauren walked over and kicked the plastic doorstop out. After it closed behind her she turned to him. “Are you crazy?”
He looked so desperate standing there in his Italian three-piece suit, wringing his hands together, worry line creased across his forehead. He must have been, to come to her work.
“I’m so sorry … ”
“About what? You were out with your wife. You’re married. I can’t pretend you don’t have a wife and a life that doesn’t include me.”
“I don’t want to hurt you.”
She laughed at the absurdity of that statement. “Too late, Mark. It’s my own fault. That’s what I get for fooling around with a married man.”
Mark came toward her and tried to put his arms around her. “I’m sorry.”
She pushed back from him. “I know. Apology accepted. You have to go before someone sees you here.”
He nodded his head slightly in agreement. “Can I at least call you tonight?”
Lauren’s mind flashed back to the dream she had the night before. A shudder ran through her and she tried to focus. “My door will be open at seven o’clock. If you’re not there, it’ll be locked at seven oh five.” She opened the door and left him standing alone in her office. He could find his own way out.
“Is everything okay?” Reese asked as she got into their dented, unmarked car idling in front of headquarters.
“Sometimes I think it is, other times no.”
“That was your ex, right?”
She stared out the passenger window. “One of them.”
“If there’s anything I can do … ”
“Yeah. One thing,” she said. “Just be my partner. Don’t try to sleep with me, or marry me, or stalk me.”
He smiled. “I think I can manage that. You still want to go out and eat? We could stay and fish in the mug machine for that witness.”
“I would love to do that, but I’m still starving. Let’s get a cheeseburger first.”
He put the car into gear, glancing sideways at her as he pulled out. “While it’s flattering that you think I might want to date, marry, or stalk you, I want you to know something,” he told her.
“What’s that?”
“All things considered, I really think I could do better than you.”
She patted his arm maternally. “That’s my boy.”
34
After lunch Riley and Reese came back to the office to face the dreaded mug machine.
Since the mid-nineties every person arrested in Erie County had their mugshot and arrest details added to a database that police can use to search a suspect’s prior arrests, prior addresses, known associates, and aliases. One of the more useful features is the ability to search people’s tattoos. Used mostly to document gang tattoos, it still came in handy for other cases, such as Vinita Ortiz’s. Not available at the time of her murder, the mug machine was loaded with tens of thousands of pictures of the usual suspects. Armed with the bartender’s sketch, a bottle of Pepsi, and a candy bar, Lauren settled in back at the office for a long computer search.
Tattoos were listed specifically, but in general categories like names, flowers, gang signs, or numbers. Lauren had to specify white male, tattoo on left hand, and then go through the categories, because every intake person listed things differently. And she had to hope the guy had been arrested at all; if he’d lived a law-abiding life since the stabbing or chosen to commit his crimes in Niagara County, this search was all for naught. Lauren had once spent eight hours straight looking at mugs for a guy with a scar across his neck for a particularly sadistic rape. Sore eyes and hours later, she hit on a man who’d had his throat slit in prison. The tearful victim picked him out right away. Patience was the key.
“You think they would even take a picture of a fish?” Reese asked, looking over her shoulder.
“I’m more worried that he’s never been arrested.” She hit the mouse, bringing up six more close-ups of arrestees’ hands.
“Keep at it.” Reese gave her a pat on the shoulder. “I’m feeling lucky.”
She half turned in her seat. “Then maybe you should do it,” she called back to him as he sat at his desk.
“I’m feeling lucky I have you as my badass, hard-working partner.” Picking up the extra tuna sub he had gotten to go since one cheeseburger was barely enough to make a dent in his appetite, Reese took a giant bite, lettuce falling from his chewing mouth back onto the paper it had been wrapped in.
“I’ll keep that in mind.” She turned back and kept flipping through the pictures.
Four hours later, after going through every left-handed tattoo picture in the database, Lauren had the bright idea that maybe Rodney had gotten the hand wrong, switched to searching right hands, and came up with the koi fish tattoo in five minutes. There, on her screen, was a beautiful orange and red rendering of a Japanese fish inked in the web of a six-foot-three white guy’s right thumb and forefinger.
“Reese!” she called and listened to his chair scraping back as he rushed over to the screen.
“Holy shit,” he said as she enlarged the picture. “That is a good-looking goldfish.”
“And it belongs to Mr. Kenneth Steinmetz of Orchard Park.” She clicked on a link and pulled up a mugshot. “Arrested twelve years ago for failure to pay child support.”
He rubbed his hands together in anticipation. “Time for some photo arrays.”
“I’ll make one of his mug shot and put one together for the tattoo,” Lauren said, setting up the program. “We’ll get Luz and Rodney in here ASAP and do a double blind.”
Departmental policy stated that the detectives working on the case could not show a photo array to a witness, in order to avoid being suggestive. They’d have to arrange two separate detectives to come in and show the arrays to Luz and Rodney. It was time consuming, but better done right than done fast.
“Do you have enough fish tattoo pictures to do an array?”
Lauren nodded. “Thank God for Pisces tattoos. Who knew so many people got their zodiac sign tattooed on them?”
“Did I ever show you my tattoo? I have a big—”
She held up a hand to his face. “Stop. If you want to keep me as a partner, you’ll stop right there.”
“Okay,” he laughed. “Good job, Columbo. Let’s get these arrays shown and pray one of them can pick out the guy or the tattoo.”
35
Mark was at her house at exactly seven o’clock. He had changed out of his suit into a golf shirt and a pair of jeans. As soon as Lauren opened the doo
r, he wrapped his arms around her and kissed her. She didn’t stop him, even though she knew she should, and kissed him back.
He picked her up in his arms and carried her up the stairs to her bed. It wasn’t their bed; she’d thrown that out the day after he left for good. It was her bed, in her house. He put her down gently on the duvet and then lay down next to her. Instead of trying to make love to her, he looked at her for a long time and then said, “I want this too, Lauren. It’s not just sex.”
Instead of delivering one of her razor sharp comebacks, she just went with it and melted away in his arms. He smelled like soap and faded cologne.
If he wanted sex, or friendship, or hugs, or a bridge partner she would give in to him. If she demanded that he leave his wife, he’d say no. If he came back over tomorrow, she’d say yes to him again. She wanted to say all these things to him, but it didn’t matter. They both already knew. So she let herself be happy in the moment and hoped she wouldn’t regret it.
Later, they went back downstairs and watched an old monster movie from the fifties on the couch and ate popcorn. They used to do that when they were married and the girls were in bed—snuggle on the couch and watch horror movies. Mark would laugh and tease her when she covered her eyes with the pillow during the scary parts.
When it came time for him to leave, he kissed her on her forehead. “Tonight was great.”
“Yeah,” she agreed, “it really was.”
“I think we should go away somewhere. To a nice beach and drink big, fruity drinks with umbrellas in them.”
“I can’t right now. I’ve got too much going on, but I want to. When I close the Ortiz case or when this trial is over.”
He kissed her again. “It’s a date.”
Why pretend to be noble? she thought to herself as she watched him drive away. I don’t care about hurting his wife. I was his wife first, after all.
She realized that she was happy. For the first time since the girls left for school, she was happy. Even if it was a slippery kind of happy that could vanish at any minute. She was going to hold on to it as long as she could.
36
Across the street from Lauren’s house there was a grand Colonial for sale. White, with stately pillars gracing either side of the entrance, it had been on the market for quite a while. The owners had moved out of state and now there it sat, vacant. The realty company had men come over to mow the lawn now and then, but the trees were overgrown and the yard was starting to look wild.
Parked deep in the driveway was Joe Wheeler’s undercover car. It was hidden in the dark shadow of the house, but it wouldn’t have mattered. Lauren didn’t know what his car looked like. As he watched Mark Hathaway’s luxury sedan pull away, his anger boiled over inside. He had his suspicions and now he knew. One time could have been a stopover for any number of reasons. But twice? No. There was only one reason he’d be there so late twice. That was why she wouldn’t look at him when they were checking out Katherine Vine’s car. That was why she hadn’t responded to his flowers.
Because she knew she was wrong to be with Mark Hathaway, a married man. Mark had had enough of her act once already, but he was weak, same as Joe. Lauren was a good piece of ass. The best Joe’d ever had, actually. And Joe knew once you had that, you wanted more. Sweat dripped down his temple. Without the air on, the car was like an oven.
One light flicked off downstairs, then another. His hands clenched and unclenched the steering wheel. She was still so beautiful, so tempting. A woman like Lauren Riley was a prize. Something to hold on to.
Clench. Unclench.
So tempting.
Why was she still provoking him?
37
Once a day, the guards led David to a rec room in the basement of the holding center. It was a cold, gray room with stale air that smelled of mold. There were two weight benches, a chess table, a heavy bag with some old boxing gloves scattered around the floor next to it, and an ancient television set. He got one hour of rec time with the three other prisoners they had in isolation. Each prisoner had their own guard, watching them from the corner of the room, making sure they didn’t kill each other. Eight people stretched across a room that could accommodate fifty made their time there seem to drag. David always started with the weight bench. He wanted to keep in shape, in case he got out of this jam and did make it to college.
One of the prisoners was a kid even younger than he was. Malcolm was a tiny seventeen-year-old who had burned his grandmother’s house down, killing the tenant upstairs. He didn’t say much. Sometimes he just sat in one of the chairs in front of the TV and cried softly, his shoulders hunched forward. He never said why he burned the house down, only that he was sorry he did it and wanted to go back home to his mother. David thought the kid might not be all there, that maybe he had some mental problems, but the guards didn’t seem too concerned. As long as he didn’t make trouble, he could cry all he wanted.
Harold was another story. He never shut up. He talked to whoever would listen, or just to whoever was in earshot, about how he was innocent and being framed by the police, and his lawyer sucked, and his girlfriend was a slut. David never heard why he was in jail or what he did exactly. Harold would slip the gloves on and beat the heavy bag as he talked out loud to everyone and no one. Sometimes the guards would tell him to shut up, but it never lasted long. He’d stop for a minute and then you’d hear him muttering under his breath. That would turn into a whisper and the next thing you knew he was back to ranting again. It got so that David just learned to tune him out.
The only inmate that seemed like any kind of a threat was Stefan. He was six-foot-two and pure jailhouse muscle. He walked over to the other weight bench as soon as he came in.
Stefan rolled the sleeves up on his chambray work shirt, revealing a series of tattoos that looked muddy and homemade. His shaved head shone under the lights like a highly polished hardwood floor. Stefan had the calculating look of a cobra. Every move he made seemed slow and purposeful, as if he was coiling to strike. One of the guards told David that Stefan had been in solitary because he’d assaulted two officers during chow when he first got to the holding center. He’d broken one guard’s nose. Stefan told him he did it on purpose because he didn’t like having a cellmate.
Stefan had taken a liking to David for some reason and was teaching him chess. They would sit across from each other on the rickety chairs, moving their pieces, talking softly. Stefan always talked softly so the guards couldn’t hear. Not that they were plotting anything, but David thought it was just a habit Stefan had developed, having been in jail so much of his life.
Stefan was a professional at doing time. He’d bragged about it more than once. Awaiting trial on a robbery, he said he’d plea at the last minute. The food was better at the holding center than in the state prisons, he explained. He’d take the plea for one to four and be out in two and a half. Stefan had the system all figured out.
“Now with your case, kid,” he said, moving his rook over, “I don’t know if I’d take this to trial. They got your DNA. Juries love DNA.”
“Yeah, but we had sex. I mean, we both wanted to have sex. I didn’t have to kill her.”
“And you told this to the cops?” Stefan’s fingers rested on his queen for just a second, then moved to a pawn. On the back of his right hand, inked in black scrawl, was the name Irma, on his left forearm was the name Denise. David wanted to ask him who they were but thought better of it. Stefan shared what he wanted to share. David moved one of his own pawns forward towards Stefan’s rook.
“I didn’t have anything to hide.”
Stefan’s eyebrows pulled together as he moved his knight again. “Never speak to the cops. Ever. The first words out of your mouth should be, ‘I want a lawyer.’ Make them prove that shit, dawg.”
David moved his bishop to block Stefan’s knight. “I just can’t believe this is happening to me. I bang some lady, who w
anted to have sex with me, and now I’m in jail because she’s dead.”
“We’re all innocent, don’t you know that, bro?” Stefan’s smile widened. “It ain’t about who done this or who didn’t do that; it’s about who has the best lawyer, the most money, and the better connections. You think if I was a banker who robbed his own vault I’d be sitting here playing chess with you?”
“I have a good lawyer. And a cop who’s working on my side.”
Stefan shrugged. “Maybe you got a shot then. You’re a good-looking
white kid. The jurors will like you. Just keep sticking to the ‘I didn’t do it’ story no matter what. Especially in here. There are a lot of snitches in jail. They’ll do anything to get some time off their sentence.”
“I really didn’t do it.”
“But you had sex with her?”
“Yeah. In her car. It was a Mercedes.”
“A Mercedes?” Stefan’s eyebrow arched up. “Was it good?”
A slow smile spread across David’s face as he savored the memory. Stefan caught it and returned a knowing grin.
“Yeah,” David assured him. “It was.”
Across the room, Malcolm let out a long, slow sob.
38
“Are you ready to talk now?” Violanti’s voice was hesitant, as if he was afraid of poking a sleeping bear.
In fact, Lauren was in a better mood that next day. She and Reese were making progress with the Ortiz homicide. She was at peace, at least temporarily, with her situation with Mark. Putting up with Violanti seemed a small price to pay when things were finally going her way.
“I am. I just needed to get my thoughts together on this case.”
“What are your thoughts?”
“I looked up Katherine Vine’s sister and I want to go and see her.”
“Excellent.”
“Don’t get too happy, I could still change my mind.” Her good mood didn’t extend into making Violanti’s life easier. She liked having him think she could walk away at any moment. It kept their playing field level.
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