By ten o’clock the next morning, the arrangements had been made for Dana to speak to Randall. At the stationhouse she’d been wired for sound with a small microphone taped between her breasts. Presently, they sat in an unmarked police van around the corner from the building on Highland Avenue. Two officers would accompany Dana into the building while he and Mari stayed in the van with the techs listening to the conversation. He would give the go ahead if anyone needed to rush the apartment if Dana was in trouble.
He gazed over at Dana, who had a look of determination on her face. Even though it was clear to him, he asked her, “Are you sure you want to do this?”
“You know that I am.”
He held her gaze for a long moment, wishing he could think of something to change her mind, but honestly, he admired her courage.
Mari coughed, trying to draw their attention. “Let’s get this show on the road before we become a neighborhood curiosity.” She pushed open the van’s back door and got out. Dana followed her.
Mari said, “Remember, keep your hands away from your chest, or you’ll distort the transmission. Try not to cough or sneeze. And don’t sweat.”
“I know.”
“Keep him talking as much as you can, but try to focus on Father Malone.”
Dana nodded. “I understand.” Then she looked at him, the expression in her eyes pleading with him to understand why she felt she had to do this. He did understand, but that didn’t mean he had to like it. More than what might happen here worried him, though. She’d already proven that she was willing to risk her life to find out what happened by coming here the first time. She’d promised him she’d stay out of it, and until now, she’d kept her word. What else would she be willing to do to catch this killer?
The two officers who were to accompany her into the building joined them and she walked off without saying another word to him.
Mari climbed back into the van, sat and pulled the door closed. “You sure know how to pick ’em, Stone” Mari said, but there was admiration, not censure, in her voice.
“Thanks,” he said.
Flanked by the two officers, Dana entered through the side door used by building maintenance to empty the trash. They had no idea how much Old Specs, or Theodore Randall as she had come to know him, could see from his front view and they didn’t want to take any chances he’d know she was coming before she got there.
As they walked through the building, the palm of her hand clutching her nurse’s bag grew clammy. She was supposed to tell Teddy that she was visiting her patients in the building and had decided to check on him. If he weren’t involved in Pierce’s death, it was a harmless ruse. If he were, no lie on earth would keep him from knowing her true purpose there.
She stopped in front of Teddy’s door while the two officers hid from view. Having Teddy spot them when he came to the door would defeat their purpose. The moment she got inside, they would take up positions by the door where they would be able to come to her aid quickly if they needed to.
She took a deep breath and knocked on the door. A few seconds later, she heard Teddy’s, “Who is it?”
She took another deep breath. “It’s me, Teddy. Dana Molloy from At-Home Healthcare.”
The door was pulled open. Teddy sat in his chair, a grin on his face. “What brings a pretty thing like you to my door?”
Good God, the old geezer was flirting with her. “I was in the building and thought I’d check on you. Find out how you were doing since the other day.”
“Come in, child, if you’ve got a minute. I sure could use some company.”
“Thanks, I will.”
Teddy rolled back to let her enter. “Go on in the living room. You know where to sit.”
She did as he asked, resisting the urge to look behind her to see if the officers were moving in. She knew they wouldn’t do that until the door closed, but the temptation to check assailed her anyway.
She sat, set her bag on the floor and waited for Teddy to wheel himself into position across from her. The first thing he did was to check the view outside his window. “Can I get you something to drink?” he asked. “I’ve got some iced tea.”
“That would be fine.”
With a pleased smile, he rolled off toward the kitchen. He was saying something to her that she could barely make out about the weather, his relief that the heat spell had finally broken. She tuned him out and took that opportunity to slide her hand through the slats of the Venetian blinds. She waved to the unmarked car parked across the street, one of the signs that everything was okay that she could use if she got the opportunity.
She snatched her hand back instants before Teddy returned with two glasses of tea resting on a tray on his lap. He handed one to her. “Thanks,” she said, took the smallest sip possible and set it on the table beside her. The drink held no chemical aftertaste, but she wasn’t taking any chances that he might try to poison her.
Teddy took a big gulp from his glass. He eyed her with a look, part skepticism, part concern. “Aren’t you back to work a little soon? They make you come in?”
“Something like that. My brother is starting college in the fall. I need the money.”
“How old is he?”
“Seventeen.”
Teddy nodded. “The same age my boy was when they gunned him down. I wish I could have gotten him interested in going to school instead of running the streets. Maybe he’d be alive today.”
An idea seized her. Although Teddy looked to be in his seventies, drinking, the kind he must have done, aged a person. Jonathan pulled his records this morning and found out he was only sixty-seven. Twenty-five years ago, he would have been forty-two, young enough to have a son only seventeen. “Is that when you started drinking? After he died?”
His chest puffed up and he looked back at her with indignation flashing in his eyes. “Who told you that?”
“Teddy, I’m a nurse. I know these things, and I understand.”
All the air seemed to deflate out of him. “Yeah, that’s when it happened. I couldn’t take losing my boy the way I did. Not getting any justice for his murder. They called the shooting justified, even though he had no gun, no weapon of any kind.”
She could see how such a thing might push a man over the edge. Though she felt tempted to leave him alone with what was still a palpable grief, she remembered the edict to keep him talking. “What happened?”
“I lost myself in the bottle, that’s what. I left my family—my wife and my daughter. I wasn’t any good to them anymore the way I was. I found myself living on the street near some old church. The Father there used to let me sleep in this little room at the back of the church so I didn’t freeze myself to death in the winters. He was good to me in many ways, even after he died.”
“What do you mean?”
“There was a fire at that church. One of the newspapers ran a picture of the bystanders to that fire. I was one of them. That’s how my daughter found me. She fixed me up, took care of me. Got me back working and got me this place.”
Thinking that she might also offer some insight into what happened back then, she asked, “Where is your daughter now?”
“She died in the car accident that took my legs.”
For a moment, Dana said nothing. She could understand this man’s rage that his life had offered him little but sorrow. Again, she was tempted to leave him to it, but she wasn’t going to walk out without getting what she came for.
“I think I’ve heard about that fire,” Dana said. “That priest Father Malone was killed.”
Teddy nodded. “He was a good man. He didn’t deserve to die like that.”
“How did the fire start?”
Teddy shook his head. “I don’t know,” Teddy said, but she didn’t believe him.
“You don’t know or you don’t remember?”
“I remember fine. I remember those old buildings catching fire and burning and standing outside watching the whole place turn to ashes and charred wood.” Tears sto
od in his eyes, waiting to fall. He wiped his sleeve across his nose and mouth. “I remember.”
Yet she knew that he held something back from her, maybe his own involvement, maybe something else. She didn’t know what. She tried the only tactic that seemed viable to her then. “Did you set the fire, Teddy? Maybe you fell asleep with a bottle? You were smoking?”
He shook his head violently. “No. I didn’t have nothing to do with that.” He turned to the window and looked out. When he turned back, there was accusation in his eyes. “I should have known it. They sent you in here, didn’t they? Damn car parked outside my house all day. I should have known they were up to no good.”
Dana sighed. She’d come so close and blown it. She tried to think of some way to salvage the situation. Maybe honesty was her only option. “Yes, they sent me in here. They think you know why someone would want to murder Amanda Pierce, something you told her.”
“So what if I did. She’s dead now. Ain’t nothing I can say going to bring her back.”
“No, but you can help the police find her killer.”
“I don’t give one damn about the police.”
His hands worried something at his waist. Something metal flashed at her in the rays of sunlight filtering through the blinds. For a moment, she feared it was a gun until she caught sight of what it was. The cross at the end of a strand of black rosary beads. Thanks to Tim, Catholic guilt was something she understood.
“Then help me. As long as her murderer is out there, I’m in danger. I was the last person to see her alive and someone wants to kill me for that. How much longer do you have on this earth, Mr. Randall? Can you go to your maker with another death on your conscience?” She paused to let her words sink in. “Tell me what you saw that night.”
His shoulders slumped and shook. “I saw them that night, those three boys. Three of the ones Father tried to help. They come strutting up to the rectory in the dead of night. I was across the street, sitting on a bus stop bench they used to have back then. I knew they were up to no good, but Father let them in anyway. A few minutes later, they came tearing out of there like the devil himself was after them. The next thing I knew I smelled smoke. Those old buildings went up like two logs on a fire.”
“Why didn’t you tell anyone what you saw?”
Tears streamed down Teddy’s face. “I was drunk, you understand. Too drunk to get up and help him. Too drunk for anyone to believe me. I didn’t tell the cops but I told one of the firemen. That’s when one of those photographers got my picture. He told me to sober up and get out of his way. When the cops came by, I told them I made it up.”
“Who were those boys? Where are they now?”
“I don’t know. Two of them moved out of the neighborhood right away, Randy Parker and Miguel Colon. The other moved, too, but I know where you can find him. He became a cop. His name is Thomas Moretti.”
Eighteen
Jonathan shared a quick look with Mari, hearing Randall’s last words. “I’m getting her out of there. Get on the phone to Shea and find out where Moretti is.” He launched himself out of the back of the van and jogged up to the building. The driver’s side door of the unmarked car opened, but he waved its occupant back. Dana wasn’t in any danger. At least not from Randall.
He walked up to the door, nodding to the two officers in a way that signaled everything was all right. He knocked on the door. “Mr. Randall, open up. It’s Detective Stone.”
But it was Dana that answered a few moments later. Her eyes were rimmed in red and her lower lip trembled. “Are you all right?”
She nodded, but it was clear that she wasn’t. Both Randall’s tale of woe and the discovery that Moretti was involved in this mess must have gotten to her. He pulled her into his arms and held her, absorbing the tiny tremors that racked her body.
She laid her cheek against his chest. “My God, Jon. What did I fall into?”
He felt the stares of the two officers on him. He nodded toward the back of the apartment. The two men brushed past him to see to Randall.
“I don’t know, baby,” he said. But he damn sure intended to find out. He hadn’t told her this, and didn’t intend to, but Mari had found out one more pertinent bit of information regarding Moretti—he was supposed to have been on duty the morning Pierce disappeared but he came in late, at least an hour after Dana saw her getting into that car. He’d disappeared later in the day, too, and no one had been able to reach him.
He squeezed her waist. “Let’s get out of here.” She nodded and allowed him to lead her from the building with an arm around her waist.
Once they were back in the van, she asked, “What happens now?”
“We get you to somewhere safe and we find Moretti.” He glanced at Mari who shook her head. Shea didn’t know where he was either. Damn. That didn’t completely surprise Jonathan, but it complicated things. He wasn’t looking forward to hunting down another cop, if that’s what it came to, not even Moretti.
“What about Teddy?”
“We’ll be watching him, too.” Although Moretti didn’t seem interested in him before, but that might have changed.
“He probably shouldn’t be left alone.”
“You’re probably right.” After his revelations today, finding himself in police custody if only for his own protection wouldn’t sit well with Randall.
The car that had been sitting in front of Randall’s place pulled around the corner and stopped across from them. “Come on,” he said to Dana. He helped her out of the van and into the car. He exchanged a look with the driver, who nodded. Everything was in place. Jonathan nodded back. “Let’s go.”
Dana stared out the window as the car traveled north on the Bruckner, headed toward the New England Thruway. She had no idea where they were headed and didn’t really care. With all the unspoken words and silent communication passing between the men in the car, she understood that they were taking her somewhere else to do some more hiding. For the first time she didn’t mind. It was one thing when she thought whoever was after her was some unknown assailant with no luck and no means of finding her. It was another to know that this man was a cop; someone trained to kill if he needed to.
She felt Jonathan’s fingers squeeze hers. She looked up at him, trying to force a benign expression on her face. He didn’t need to see her fear, not just for herself, but for him. Or at least, he didn’t need a visual reminder of it, there plain on her face.
He squeezed her hand again, offering her an encouraging smile. “It will be all right, sweetheart,” he whispered.
She nodded, noting the irony of their situation—each of them putting on a brave face for the other. She wondered if inside, he was as terrified as she was.
After a while they pulled into the parking lot of a squat brick building and parked at the end of it, facing the last door in the complex. She recognized this place. She’d seen it countless times driving on the highway. If anyone had told her she’d spend a moment inside this place, she’d have told them they were nuts.
The driver cut the engine and he and the front passenger got out. They went up to the door, painted an electric shade of blue, and went inside, leaving the door open.
She turned to Jonathan. “This is the safe place you’re going to put me? Whose idea was this?”
“Mine. The only way to get in here is through the window, through the bottleneck we just went through to get into the parking lot and through that door. There will be two plainclothes officers outside at all times.”
One of the officers came back to the open door and nodded. Dana guessed that meant everything was all right. Jonathan got out of the car and came around to her side to open the door. She took the hand he extended toward her and got out. Once inside the room, she looked around. Definitely not the Ritz Carlton. Not even the Holiday Inn.
The two other officers left the room, closing the door behind them. She wondered what had prompted that. Probably some more silent cop communication she wasn’t privy to.
; She turned her head to look at Jonathan who stood beside her. “Is this where you usually put up folks you’re trying to protect?”
He shook his head. “No.”
So, it was chosen because it was a place Moretti wouldn’t instantly look for her. “That’s a relief. I wouldn’t want to have my tax dollars going to pay for places like this.”
“They’re not. You pay taxes in Mount Vernon. Besides, what do you have against this place?” He looked around, appearing to take in the furnishings, which consisted only of a solitary chair, a bed, a dresser and a single night table beside the bed. “It’s charming.”
Hands on hips she said, “For one thing, it’s a sex motel. You know, the type folks rent by the hour to cheat on their spouses. I’m surprised there’s not a mirror on the ceiling.”
“There was. I had them take it down.”
Despite herself, she laughed. She knew what he was trying to do: leaven her anxiety with a little humor. She couldn’t fault him completely, since it was working. “You’re not staying with me, are you?”
“No. As I said, there will be two officers outside at all times. I’ll be back as soon as I can. I’ll bring your stuff from my apartment when I come back. Is there anything else you want me to bring you?”
“How about a bottle of Lysol and a can of Raid?”
“I’ll see what I can do.” He took her hand and pulled her closer. “Listen, seriously. Don’t open that door for anyone who doesn’t show you a badge through the peephole and slip his I.D. under the door.”
She nodded. She’d already been introduced to the two officers outside and remembered their names.
“Put the chain on the door and the chair underneath the doorknob after I’m gone. Stay away from the window.”
“I know, Jon.” She sighed. He’d given her the same instructions before he’d left her at his apartment that first day. But this time she sensed in him a real reluctance to go. She didn’t want him to leave either, but she knew her best chance of survival was for someone to find Moretti and lock him up before he found her. “If you have to go, go. I’ll be all right.”
Body Of Truth Page 23