Dead of Winter (CSI: NY)

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

He got up slowly, hitching up his black denim slacks.

  “When was Louisa Cormier last here?” she asked.

  “A few days ago,” he said. “Day before the storm I think. I can check.”

  He went to the door of his office, opening it to the cracking sound of gunfire. He held it open for her, then stepped out in front of her, and crossed behind the five people at the small-arms firing range.

  “Cold brings them out,” Drietch said. “They get a little stir-crazy and want to shoot something. This gets it out of their system.”

  Aiden made no response. Drietch went to a door next to the check-in desk. A man, stocky, balding, reached under the desk, pushed a button, and the door opened.

  “I’ve got a key,” said Drietch, “but Dave’s almost always here.”

  The room was small, bright, with small wooden boxes on shelves from floor to ceiling and a small table with no chairs in the middle of the room.

  “We’ve got almost four hundred handguns in here,” said Drietch, moving to one of the shelves as he pulled a ring of keys from his pocket. “Master key opens them all.”

  He pulled down a box and placed it on the table in front of Aiden. Aiden looked at the box and then at the shelves.

  “Some of the boxes have padlocks. Some don’t,” she said.

  “No gun in the box, no lock,” he explained.

  “This box has no lock,” she said, looking at the box on the table.

  “Must have forgotten to put it back on,” he said. “It’s probably in the box.”

  Aiden concluded that Drietch ran a very loose ship.

  “Ammunition’s in a safe,” Drietch said, reading her look of disapproval.

  Aiden said nothing. She reached down and lifted the lid of the metal box. There was a gun inside, a Walther .22 exactly like the one Louisa had in the drawer of her desk.

  “Target gun,” said Drietch.

  “It can still kill,” said Aiden, inserting a pencil in the barrel and lifting the gun from the box.

  It took her a few seconds to determine that the gun had been cleaned recently.

  “Did Louisa Cormier clean this gun?”

  “No, Dave does that,” he said.

  Aiden bagged the gun and turned to Drietch.

  “I’ll need a receipt for that,” he said.

  She took out her notebook, wrote a receipt, signed it, and handed it to him.

  “Does Ms. Cormier open the box and get the gun herself?”

  “No,” he said. “Stands and waits. I’ve got the key. I take it out, check to be sure it isn’t loaded, hand it to her. I bring the ammunition to her at the range. When she’s done shooting, she gives the gun back and I lock it up.”

  “She never touches the lock or the drawer?” asked Aiden.

  “She doesn’t have a key,” he said patiently.

  Aiden nodded and checked for prints on the box. She lifted four clean ones.

  Aiden put her gloves into her kit. She’d have to check the toilets, garbage cans, trash containers outside for the missing lock. It wouldn’t be fun, but it would beat digging for that bullet in the elevator pit.

  The search took twenty minutes, during which time she also checked and double-checked the pay parking lot next door.

  When she went back inside, Drietch was standing next to an open stall on the range, a gun resting on the platform against which he was leaning. He pointed at the gun.

  As she approached, he stepped back, giving her space.

  Aiden fired. The targets, familiar black on white circles, were about twenty feet away. She got off five rounds and handed him the gun. Something on the floor of the range caught her eye.

  Drietch looked at the target. The pattern was all inside the bull’s-eye. Aiden could have done almost as well if the targets were twice the distance away.

  “You’re good,” he said with respect.

  “Thanks,” she said. “Have everyone stop firing and tell them to put their guns down.”

  “Why the —?” he began.

  “Because there’s a lock out there,” she said. “And I’m going to go bag it as evidence.”

  “Everything is arranged,” said Arthur Greenberg.

  Mac had called him to double-check.

  “Snow, rain, anything but the terrible Wrath of God will not stop us from going ahead,” Greenberg continued. “Is there anyone you want notified?”

  “No,” Mac said.

  He was waiting at the courthouse for a homicide detective named Martin Witz and an assistant DA named Ellen Carasco to come out of the chambers of Judge Meriman’s office, hopefully with a warrant to search the apartment of Louisa Cormier.

  “Then,” said Greenberg, “we’ll see you at ten tomorrow morning?”

  “Yes,” said Mac, looking at the solid door with the name of Judge Meriman engraved impressively on polished brass.

  Greenberg hung up. So did Mac as the door to Judge Meriman’s chamber opened and Ellen stepped out.

  “He wants to talk to you,” she said.

  Carasco was deceptively lean. Mac knew that beneath her loose-fitting suit were the impressive muscles of a bodybuilder. Carasco was ranked among the top thirty female bodybuilders in the world in her division. Her face was clear, pretty, her hair dark and long. Stella had more than once suggested that Carasco would not turn him down if Mac were to ask her out to dinner. Mac had never followed up on the suggestion. He didn’t plan to.

  Mac followed her back into the judge’s chamber where Detective Martin Witz sat heavily in a reddish-brown leather chair facing the judge behind the desk.

  Meriman, nearing retirement, proud of his mane of white hair and his well-groomed signature white mustache, nodded at Mac, who nodded back.

  “We’ve been over the evidence,” said Meriman in a practiced baritone. “I want to go over it again with you before I make my decision.”

  Mac nodded again. Meriman held out a palm indicating that Mac should sit. He sat upright in a chair identical to the one Witz was in. Carasco stood between the two seated men.

  “Victim was Charles Lutnikov,” said Mac. “Lived in the same building with Louisa Cormier. They knew each other.”

  “How well?” asked the judge.

  “From the evidence, reasonably well,” said Mac.

  Mac told the judge about Aiden Burn’s discovery of the lock that had been used on the box that held the firing range gun, the recovery of the bullet in the elevator shaft, the typewriter ribbon and what they had found on it, the report by Kindem saying that someone other than Louisa Cormier may have written most of her novels.

  “Gun been tested for a match with the bullet?” Meriman asked.

  “We’re doing that now,” said Mac.

  “Flimsy,” said Meriman, folding his hands and looking up at his three visitors.

  “Search warrants have been issued with less,” said Carasco.

  “Two pieces of information,” Meriman said. “First, this is a world-famous author we are talking about, a person with resources including an attorney of high cost and great skill. Second, your evidence is largely circumstantial and without substance. Highly suggestive, I agree, but —”

  Mac’s cell phone vibrated insistently in his pocket. He reached for it saying, “I’m sorry, Your Honor, but this may be pertinent.”

  “Keep it brief,” said the judge, looking at the clock on his wall, “and get off the phone if it has nothing relevant pertaining to this request for warrant.”

  Mac answered the phone with, “Yes.”

  He listened. The call lasted no more than ten seconds. He flipped the cell phone closed, pocketed it, and said, “That was CSI Investigator Burn. The lock that was cut from the box has two clear fingerprints on it, Louisa Cormier’s.”

  “It was her gun,” said the judge.

  “No,” said Mac. “It belonged to the range. She didn’t have a key, but, according to the firing range owner, she did know where the box was.”

  Aiden had said something else, somethi
ng Mac didn’t share with the judge, although he would share it if pressed. Aiden had just told Mac that the bullet from the elevator shaft and the firing-range gun were not a match.

  Why, Mac thought, had Louisa Cormier broken into Drietch’s to get to a gun that was not the murder weapon? The problem, Mac concluded, was that his prime suspect was a mystery writer who knew how to make a straightforward investigation look like it was committed in the Land of Oz.

  Judge Meriman swiveled his chair and looked out at the gray day threatening fresh snow. Then he swiveled back and said, “I will issue a warrant for a search of the premises of Louisa Cormier for the purpose of searching for a .22 caliber weapon for the purpose of comparison with the bullet your investigator found.”

  There was no way there could be a match with the weapon Louisa Cormier had shown them. Mac was certain it hadn’t been fired in at least two or three days, probably much longer. The chances of there being a third .22 were very slight. If there was a third gun, the murder weapon, and he didn’t rule it out, Louisa Cormier had almost certainly gotten rid of it by now. For now, however, Mac would take what he could.

  “Thank you,” said Mac.

  “And I’ll need forensic evidence that, should you find it, the weapon in question proves to have been fired. If the .22 at the firing range is not the murder weapon, you can then run gun fire tests on any .22 you find in Louisa Cormier’s apartment to determine if the bullet that killed Charles Lutnikov came from that weapon.”

  A look of conspiratorial cooperation passed between Mac and the judge.

  “If in search of the specific items indicated, you come up with further evidence that Louisa Cormier has been involved in the crime under investigation, that evidence must be discovered during a search for the gun. Is that clear?”

  “Yes,” said Carasco, Witz, and Taylor in chorus.

  “Then it’s done,” said Meriman.

  Meriman picked up his phone and punched a button. He told someone to come into his office.

  “One more thing you should know, Your Honor,” Carasco said. “We have a confession from another party.”

  The judge sat back with an irritated sigh.

  “Detective Taylor believes the confession is false,” Carasco added.

  “When you have evidence that the confession is false, then I’ll issue the warrant for Louisa Cormier’s apartment,” Meriman said. “Now leave. You’ve wasted enough of my time.”

  The three visitors left the office, hearing the click of a radio being turned on behind them.

  13

  “MR. MARCO HAS NOTHING TO SAY TO YOU,” said Helen Grandfield when Stella and Danny entered the office with two uniformed officers behind them. “And this is private property so if you don’t have a warrant —”

  “This is a crime scene,” said Stella.

  The smell of baking bread had to be strong but Stella smelled nothing. She controlled her urge, her need to wipe her nose.

  “What crime?” Helen Grandfield said, rising.

  “We have evidence that strongly suggests a police officer was murdered in your corridor,” said Danny.

  Helen Grandfield looked at Danny and the two uniformed cops who had come in with them and then glared at Stella.

  “This is bullshit,” she said.

  “Mrs. Contranos,” Stella said.

  “I use and prefer the name Grandfield,” the woman said.

  “Except at the door to your apartment building,” said Stella. “And you were born Helen Marco. Lots of names.”

  Helen Grandfield tried not to glare. She failed.

  “We’d like to know if any of your bakery employees didn’t show up for work this morning and we’d like to interview everyone working in the bakery and we’ll have to insist on talking to your father again.”

  The use of her real name and her relationship to Dario Marco stopped the woman who was about to launch another protest.

  “You live on President Street in Brooklyn Heights. Anybody from the bakery visit you last night?” asked Stella.

  “No, why?”

  “Someone bled on your doorstep,” said Stella. “And someone vomited.” Stella felt more than a little queasy. “We can match the blood when we find the bleeder. We can match DNA in the vomit when we find the person who threw up.”

  The woman stood, arms at her side, quivering slightly.

  “Your cooperation will be appreciated,” said Stella.

  “My father isn’t here yet,” she said. “I’ll need his permission to…”

  Stella was shaking her head “no” before the woman finished.

  “Steven Guista,” Stella said.

  “One of our delivery-truck drivers,” Helen Grandfield said, pulling herself together.

  “We’d like to talk to him,” said Stella.

  “I don’t…”

  “He assaulted a police officer and is wanted in connection with the murder of Alberta Spanio, who was scheduled to testify today or tomorrow against your uncle,” said Stella.

  Helen Grandfield said nothing and then, after a deep breath, spoke very calmly.

  “Steve Guista has the day off. Yesterday was his birthday. My father gave him two days off. I can give you his home address.”

  “We’ve got that,” said Stella. “Now, who else isn’t here today who should be here?”

  “Everyone else showed up for work,” said Helen.

  “We’ll need a list of all employee names and a room where I can talk to them one by one,” said Stella.

  “We don’t have anyplace you can do that,” said Helen.

  “Fine,” said Stella. “We’ll do it in the bakery.” Stella could stand it no longer. She fished a thick tissue out of her pocket and wiped her nose.

  Jordan Breeze once again sat across from detective Mac Taylor in the interrogation room. Both men had cardboard cups of coffee in front of them.

  Mac turned on the tape recorder and opened the folder in front of him. It was thicker than the last time the two men had talked.

  “You didn’t kill Charles Lutnikov,” said Mac.

  Breeze smiled and drank some coffee.

  “Your hand is trembling,” said Mac.

  “Nervous,” Breeze said.

  “No,” said Mac, shaking his head. “Multiple sclerosis.”

  “You had no right to get that information from my physician,” said Breeze.

  “Didn’t need your physician,” said Mac. “We have one of our own who observed you. Jerky eye movements. Internuclear opthalmoplegia, lack of coordination between your eyes. You stuttered when I talked to you. Noticed you had trouble picking up your coffee cup, and your hands shook. You work hard and speak slowly and distinctly to keep from slurring your speech, but you can’t completely control it. You can’t sit up straight. You keep slouching. When I touched your hand it was abnormally cold. And twice when you were pacing your cell you almost fell. There’s no way you could have walked to the river and back in the snow.”

  Breeze slowly sat up.

  “Are you having double vision?” asked Mac. “Muscle weakness. Jerking and twitching muscles. Facial pain. Nausea. Incontinence?”

  Breeze went pale and put the paper cup on the table, trying not to spill it.

  “Memory problems?” Mac went on.

  “You can’t get my medical records,” Breeze said.

  “You confessed to murder,” said Mac. “We put you in jail and have the prison doctor examine you.”

  Breeze said nothing.

  “How much time do you have before full onset?” asked Mac.

  “A year, two,” said Breeze.

  “Have a family to take care of you?”

  “No one,” said Breeze, his right hand visibly trembling now.

  “You never had a gun,” said Mac.

  Breeze didn’t answer.

  “We found the trunk in the locker three doors to the left of yours,” said Mac. “It was filled with books autographed by Louisa Cormier. You took them out of your apartment afte
r you heard about the murder, heard we were talking to Louisa Cormier, heard that she was a suspect.”

  “She signed them for me,” he said. “I’m a big fan. She’s going to dedicate the next book to me.”

  “You didn’t kill Charles Lutnikov. He never harassed you.”

  “I did.”

  “Was Lutnikov carrying anything when you shot him?”

  “No.”

  “No newspaper, books…?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Is Louisa Cormier paying your medical bills?” asked Mac.

  Breeze didn’t answer. He turned his head away. Mac thought he detected a hint of pain.

  “We’ll find out,” Mac said.

  “She’s a good person,” Breeze said.

  Mac didn’t answer. Finally, Jordan Breeze looked down.

  “Everything I touch turns to shit,” said Breeze.

  “Did Louisa gave you the details about the shooting?” asked Mac.

  “I think I want a lawyer now,” said Breeze.

  “I think that’s a good idea,” said Mac.

  One hour later, after listening to the tape of the conversation between Mac and Jordan Breeze, Judge Meriman issued a search warrant for the apartment of Louisa Cormier.

  Louisa Cormier offered Aiden and Mac no coffee this time. She was not sullen, surly, or impolite. In fact she was cooperative and gracious, but coffee and charm were clearly not on her agenda today for the CSI duo that came bearing a search warrant.

  She let them into the apartment looking a bit frayed, tired and red-eyed wearing a loose-fitting flowered dress.

  “Please wait,” she said once they were inside.

  Mac and Aiden were under no obligation to wait for her to finish the call she made to her lawyer from the wireless phone on a delicately inlaid table just inside the doorway, but they did so anyway.

  “Yes,” Louisa Cormier said into the phone, her eyes avoiding the investigators. “I have it in my hand.”

  She looked down at the search warrant.

  “Shall I read it to you?…All right. Please hurry.”

  Louisa hung up the phone. “Why are you here?” she asked. “I understand someone has confessed to killing Mr. Lutnikov.”

  “We don’t believe him,” said Mac. “His name is Jordan Breeze. You know him?”