by Ingrid Black
“And then what?”
“I just want justice,” said Kaminski.
I wondered what exactly he meant, but I was almost afraid to ask.
Did he want justice or revenge of a more immediate kind?
“Don’t get me wrong,” I said. “I don’t have any objection to murderers getting what’s coming to them. I’m the last person in the world to take the moral high ground where that’s concerned. But making sure you get the right guy is kind of important too.”
“That’s why I thought working together made sense.”
“If it was so important, why give me the brush off this lunchtime?”
“Like I told you, I wanted to make you sweat it. I wanted to make you wait a while to put you in your place. I thought I had time.”
“You’re saying you don’t?”
“I don’t have a single minute to waste anymore. When I got back to the hotel after talking to you, there was another note from Buck Randall waiting for me.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
The room was white, anonymous, antiseptic, made almost unbearable by the heat - and even more unbearable by some of the people sitting round the table that morning.
At the head of the table sat Fitzgerald, and on either side of her Sean Healy and Patrick Walsh. Those three, I didn’t mind. Dr Fisher was supposed to be there too but hadn’t been able to make it, so I felt like a captured cowboy in injun territory. I was sitting down near the other end of the desk, marvelling at how history repeats itself. At school I was always hiding out at the back of the class, hoping not to be noticed, hating the people up front with their hands in the air, desperate for approval.
Now here I was lurking near the back again, though my chances of going unnoticed this morning were about as good as a goat’s chances of making it to a long and happy retirement when placed in the lions’ enclosure at the zoo.
Seamus Dalton, who was sitting at the other end of the table to me, near where the action was, kept shooting sly glances off in my direction, making it clear what he thought of seeing me back here again. There were other detectives there too that I knew by sight – Stack, Kilbane, Ledger. They weren’t openly hostile as such, just indifferent to whatever difficulties I might be experiencing or how isolated I felt. And I wasn’t going to blame them for that. No one likes an intruder.
I remembered the first time I’d been here to help on a case. I’d found myself sitting next to Niall Boland, who’d done his best to make me welcome. I’d valued his friendship. This morning I was appreciating him all the more, and simultaneously cursing him for ducking out in search of the quiet life and leaving me to face all this crap alone.
At least this wasn’t the full team that had been assembled over the murder of Marsha Reed, only the lead detectives. I couldn’t say I was sorry to have missed the whole team since the scepticism which I could feel coming off this small group was bad enough.
“Let me get this straight,” Dalton was saying. “Some screwball that you used to work with in the FBI has been playing hide and seek with the man he thinks murdered his wife, and now you want us to believe that the same man murdered Marsha Reed?”
“I’m not asking you to believe anything,” I said tightly, for what felt like the thousandth time since the meeting had begun. “I’m just telling you what Kaminski told me. He got a delivery in his box at the hotel where he’s staying yesterday morning. Inside was a newspaper clipping on the murder of Marsha Reed with a handwritten message saying: How many more women have to die before you get your act together? He took it as evidence that the man who killed his wife was taunting him about having killed Marsha Reed too.”
“And we’re supposed to take the word of a guy who’s been booking himself into hotels under the name of the man he thinks murdered his wife? Sounds fucked up to me.”
“He was only doing what he was told to do,” I said as patiently as I could. “He was only following leads. That’s why he went round to Marsha Reed’s house to check things out.”
Which is where he saw me. It was no wonder he’d been confused. He thought I must’ve worked out myself the connection between what happened to his wife and Marsha Reed’s death, but how could I have done that when he’d only been sent the note himself that morning? Had he missed something real obvious? He didn’t know that I had no inkling there was any connection between the two strands before he himself pulled that rabbit out of the hat. I still didn’t know if there was any connection. It all seemed so bizarre.
And now I felt like I was betraying him.
Felt it like a knot in my chest.
Last night he’d sworn me to secrecy. He didn’t trust the police with the information, he said. If they got involved now, Randall would know. He’d vanish again. Kaminski would lose him once more.
“You and me, we can get him, together,” he’d said. “We can bring him in. The cops have messed up too many times. They don’t deserve another chance. I do.” I’d never seen him so desperate.
Instead, after he left, I’d watched him from on high through the window like his guardian angel as he crossed the road below, weaving through the minimal traffic on the road at that late hour. At the far kerb, he looked over his shoulder without breaking stride, glanced back towards the building, and waved up at me. I waved back.
Soon as he was gone, I picked up the phone and called Grace.
I had no doubt I was doing the right thing. I’d seen the pictures of Marsha Reed’s body. I couldn’t conceal evidence that potentially might reel in her killer. Moreover, whatever he might think or say once he learned what I’d done, I knew this was his best chance to catch Randall. No one had believed him before. Now the police were in the middle of an active murder investigation. They’d have to take his story on board. He just wasn’t thinking straight right now.
Though if he saw Seamus Dalton that morning, Kaminski would hardly be reassured that the police in Dublin would take him any more seriously than the police in Texas.
“I’m just telling you what the man said,” I found myself telling Dalton and hating myself for even trying to mollify him. “I didn’t say Buck Randall actually killed Marsha.”
“Too right he didn’t fucking kill her,” Dalton sneered right back.
“What makes you so sure?” said Walsh.
I was glad to see someone wasn’t dismissing the idea out of hand.
“What makes me so sure?” echoed Dalton incredulously, looking at a couple of the other cops for confirmation, as if this was the dumbest thing he’d ever heard. “What makes me so sure is a little thing called evidence. Namely, the lack of it.”
“There’s not much evidence against Victor Solomon either,” Walsh said equably.
“What about what Todd Fleming said?” answered Dalton.
“We only have his word for it that Marsha told him Solomon had beaten her up. And she might have been lying herself. Even if it’s true, it doesn’t prove he killed her.”
“There’s still more than there is against this Texan prison guard who might not even be in the country for all we know. You’re forgetting the report from Dr Fisher” – Dalton hated psychological analysis, profiling, all that fancy bullshit as he called it, but he didn’t mind using it when it helped him make a point or put someone down. “Most of what we got was the usual airy fairy waffle about the killer having an emotionally stunted background and issues to do with self-esteem, like that has anything to do with anything. But one thing his report did say is that this was no stranger on stranger killing. You read it. It said the killer felt comfortable at the scene. How was the imaginary Buck Randall III supposed to get familiar with Marsha Reed’s house when he didn’t know her from a hole in the ground?”
“Imaginary?” I said. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means we’ve no reason to believe this Buck, Chuck, Fuck, whatever, is even in the country. Since we all lost sleep last night after being roused by your contribution to the investigation, Special Agent, everything’s been
checked. Airports, ferry terminals, the migratory patterns of the ants in your pants, you name it, and what did we come up with? Zippo. Zilch. Big fat zero. Diddly squat, as you probably say.”
“He’d hardly come here under his own name,” I said testily.
“If you ask me, he didn’t come into the country at all.”
“Then how did he send the messages to Kaminski?” said Walsh, jumping in again.
“Am I the only one who’s noticed that there’s no evidence anyone sent anything to Mr Leon Kaminski? Because strangely enough he didn’t bring along the notes he claims he got from his wife’s killer to show to Little Ms FBI, and the only evidence he got anything the first time is a scrap torn from a newspaper. I could’ve got that myself.”
“He left them back in his hotel,” I said.
“That’s right, he conveniently left them in his hotel. But even if there were notes,” Dalton went on, his voice getting louder to stop Walsh interrupting, “even if there were a thousand notes in gold ink on pieces of parchment, for all we know they could be coming from himself. For all we know, losing his wife could’ve sent him loco” – he mimed a twirling motion with his fingers at the side of his ear – “he could have a whole colony of bats up in the belfry now. You ever stop to think maybe this whole story about some killer on the run is just a fantasy he dreamt up?”
“You’ll be saying next his wife wasn’t killed at all.”
“She was killed alright,” said Sean Healy. “That much we do know. I called them last night. The NYPD confirmed that the body of a woman named Heather Kaminski had been recovered from the side of the river in New York on October 10th last. They told me the case was still ongoing, though I think we can all guess what that means.”
“Then maybe you sent the notes to him,” Dalton said to me, “so that you could get your foot back inside the door here.”
“Dalton, you’re so full of crap they could use your body for fertiliser.”
“I’m serious. How come everything has to be about you? No sooner have you graced us with your presence again than the whole case starts to revolve around you. We couldn’t have an ordinary murder in the city. Oh no, that’d be too simple. That’d be too boring for you. Instead it has to all centre on you and your big shot American friends again.”
“That’s enough,” said Fitzgerald quietly. “I said enough,” she added when I opened my mouth to reply to Dalton. “This isn’t getting us anywhere.”
She was good at that. Like any good referee, she didn’t police passion or argument, but she knew when it had gone too far and needed to be checked back into coolness. Nothing could be gained from me and Dalton sniping at one another like children. There was something about the man, though, that just made me lose my cool. His entire existence was calculated to offend me, and it was pretty clear that he felt the same way about me.
We didn’t understand each other.
We never would.
What’s more, we didn’t want to.
“Dalton’s right,” Fitzgerald went on, taking control. “Up to a point,” she continued as he started to look smug. “Everything we know about the crime scene, about Marsha Reed’s life, about the psychological shape of this crime, makes it unlikely that this man, Buck Randall, is our killer. But that doesn’t mean we can casually ignore what Leon Kaminski told Saxon. Every lead has to be checked. Every path has to be followed.”
“But this Heather woman was strangled,” said Dalton insolently, refusing to let it go. “And she wasn’t killed in her house either. The MO’s completely different.”
“Not entirely,” answered Fitzgerald, unruffled. “She was tied up, remember, just like Heather. What’s more, when her body was found, Heather’s ring was missing too. That’s one connection we can’t ignore.”
“Kaminski never told me that,” I said.
“Why would he? The press might know about the severed finger, but they haven’t found out about Marsha’s missing ring yet. He had no way of knowing that possibly tied the two crimes together.”
Dalton looked unconvinced, but settled this time for a resentful silence.
“So you want us to look for this man, Chief?” said Walsh.
“First things first,” said Fitzgerald. “That means establishing whether anyone can identify this man as having been in the vicinity of the killing. I called the Texas police department this morning. They confirmed that Randall was close to this Jenkins Howler inside, and they also confirmed that Randall was reported missing when he failed to appear for work for a few days running, and was investigated as a missing persons case. But they said that three months later Randall called and said he’d been visiting his brother in Oklahoma and that he was sorry, he hadn’t realised people were searching for him, but he wasn’t coming back. Seems he had some debts hanging over him he wanted to escape.”
“Big debts?” said Healy.
“All debts are big if you can’t afford to pay them. Now whether you believe that or not, local police in Oklahoma went round and spoke to him and were satisfied with his story, so he was taken off the missing persons lists. He’s not wanted for any crime, he’s not broken any laws, he hasn’t skipped bail, so as far as they’re concerned if he’s in Dublin that’s his concern. He’s free to go where he likes. But I explained the situation, and” - she opened the file in front of her - “they did send through this photograph of him from the prison records to help us look for him.”
She handed the picture to Sean Healy, who passed it to Dalton, who passed it down the line till it reached me. I saw a man like any other. Small square face, tiny eyes, neat moustache, untidy scar over his left eyebrow. I glanced at it briefly and passed it on. It went all the way round to Walsh, who tried to hand it back to Fitzgerald to complete the circuit.
She shook her head.
“Give it to Kilbane,” she said. “Kilbane, I want you to run up some copies and then pass them round discreetly in the area where Marsha Reed lived. Talk to neighbours, shopkeepers, taxi drivers. Ask them if they’ve ever seen this man hanging round at all. Might turn out to be a thankless task. But if they do recognise him, that changes everything.”
“Shall I take it down now, Chief?” said Kilbane.
“Do,” Fitzgerald nodded, and Kilbane scraped back his chair, and rose to take the picture downstairs to get copies made. “And you, Stack, I want you to take these.” Again she handed a loose sheet over. “Those are Randall’s fingerprints. You’re going to have to check them individually against the prints we lifted from Marsha Reed’s flat. No need to look so happy about it. It’s a tedious job but someone has to do it. Besides, if you get a match the effort will have been more than worthwhile and you can take all the credit for it. Walsh?”
“Yes, Chief?”
“I want you to run over to speak to Mark Hudson.”
“Mark Hudson?”
“The man who knocked down Cecilia Corrigan,” I said.
“The same,” said Fitzgerald. “If Kaminski’s right, and there’s a killer on the loose in the city, then this is where it all began. Or didn’t. The point is we just don’t know. The evidence is even more tenuous in relation to this incident than it is with Marsha Reed’s death, but we can’t afford to blithely ignore it. It will all have to be checked out.”
“It really was an accident,” said Healy. “I read the file.”
“That’s true. But maybe Hudson saw something that could prove crucial. Maybe she stepped in front of the car deliberately. Maybe she was pushed. Maybe she was talking to someone immediately before she died who hasn’t been positively IDed.”
“Hudson said nothing about it at the time.”
“It’s a long shot,” she confessed, “but people often remember things a long time after they happen. Especially when there’s been a traumatic event. They get flashbacks. Memories. Sometimes they see what happened more clearly weeks after the event than they did when it was happening in front of their eyes. The mind makes an imprint of the event, and stores it away f
or future use. Can we take the risk of ignoring the possibility?”
“No problem, Chief.”
“What about me?” said Dalton.
He had the correct proportion of insolence he could get away with in his voice each time perfectly worked out. He was a master of the nuances of contempt.
“What have you been doing?” said Fitzgerald.
“Checking out Marsha’s movements before she died.”
“Then carry on doing that. I said I wanted to check out every lead, I didn’t say I wanted to close down old roads every time a new road branches off the main one. This is an augmentation of what we’ve been doing so far, not a replacement for it. That goes for the rest of you. Just follow the same lines of enquiry as before. There, we’re done for this morning. Meet again here at four to see what you’ve got. Now go to it. And Sean,” she said as chairs were scraped back and the detectives began to head for the door, “I want you to take over from me here for the next couple of hours and hold the fort. You know what needs done.”
“Consider it done. What’s the story?” asked Healy.
“I want to speak to this Leon Kaminski myself. And you’re coming with me, Saxon. I think you should be there when I introduce myself. He knows you. You know him. I want to hear from him myself what he knows about this whole affair.”
“I don’t know where he’s staying,” I admitted ruefully. “Last night he left without-”
“That’s OK,” said Fitzgerald. “Dalton found him.”
“Dalton?”
“It was easy,” said Dalton. I hadn’t realised he was still there, eavesdropping. He was standing by the door, watching me. “A few phone calls, that’s all it took.”
He made no effort to conceal his glee at having bested me.