“And then Debbie said, ‘Why, Mr. Williams, that’s not what President Carter told me!’”
The crowd broke into waves of laughter. Rockwell Davis dropped her elbow, but the way he loomed over her was pure intimidation.
“The only road to Clyde is through me. Your choice. We step outside or you leave.”
“Back off, I said.”
Melanie stood her ground, and Davis took a step backward. There was ruthlessness in his ascetic, pockmarked face. Clyde might be too smart and too smooth to commit murder in pursuit of his political goals, but was Davis? Melanie had asked Dan to look into Davis’s alibi as well as Clyde Williams’s, but with everything else going on in the investigation, she hadn’t had time to follow up. Could she be looking at the Butcher of Central Park?
“Come with me. We’ll talk privately,” Davis said under his breath.
He turned and headed for the exit that led out into the Egyptian galleries. Melanie considered the possibility that she’d be walking into a trap if she followed. Granted, she was now powerfully curious about Rockwell Davis, but that was no reason to get sloppy. She checked the reception on her cell phone and noted the locations of guards surrounding the Temple entrance. She wouldn’t sacrifice her safety, but she had to follow him. She couldn’t resist the prospect of learning more about Davis.
Melanie stepped into a long gallery that displayed mummies and sarcophagi and sculptures of emaciated cats with blank eyes. The place was full of dead people, empty of live ones, and eerily silent in contrast with the buzz of talk at the party. Melanie’s footsteps echoed back at her as she walked halfway down its length looking for Rockwell Davis, who seemed to have disappeared. She was far away from the guards, but still within screaming distance. Melanie paused before two identical statues flanking an entrance to a secondary gallery. They were strange beasts carved from blackest stone, with the head of a lion and the body of a woman.
SEKHMET. THIS GODDESS REPRESENTS THE FORCE OF VIOLENCE AND UNEXPECTED DISASTER, read the plaque.
Great.
“In here,” a voice, insinuating and cold, said from behind the statues.
Melanie’s senses were on high alert. She found Davis standing before a glass case that held a display of three painted coffins suspended by wires. They levitated weirdly, one on top of the other, several feet apart.
“Why the theatrics?” she asked.
“No theatrics. I’m just looking for privacy. There’s press around. I saw that piece of trash Gilmartin before. God knows how he got in.”
“I need to talk to Clyde,” Melanie said.
“You told me that already. I’m indulging your request by meeting with you myself. You should be grateful for that, given what happened at our meeting earlier today. You can tell me your news, and if I think it’s important, I’ll convey it to the councilman.”
“You’re calling the shots around here, aren’t you?” Melanie asked.
“I don’t have time to discuss the dynamics of our organization with you. Say what you got to say, or I’m going back inside.”
She noticed he hadn’t denied her accusation.
“We have evidence that Suzanne Shepard received a threat the day after she broadcast the segment on Clyde’s affair with Emily King—” Melanie began.
“Alleged affair. We deny it.”
“Alleged. Whatever. That’s not my concern. The point is, we’ve now linked this threat definitively to the murder. I’d be willing to preview the evidence for Clyde and give him a chance to prove that he wasn’t the one who made the threat. But in return, I need some information.”
“What kind of information?”
“A heads-up on what he’s planning to say at the press conference later.”
Davis laughed. “Am I hearing right? You’ll allow us to give you some information if we pay for it by giving you some other information? What kind of suckers do you take us for?”
“I don’t understand why this has to be such an adversarial discussion,” Melanie said.
“Maybe because you’re trying to hang a murder on my man that he didn’t commit.”
“I’m not trying to hang anything on anybody. I’m looking for the truth.”
“You say that,” Davis said, snorting derisively. “But in reality you’re looking for a conviction and some sweet press. Who you have to screw over to get to that, you don’t care.”
“You’re wrong, Rockwell.”
“You want to know what Clyde’s gonna say at the press conference? He’s gonna say you’re harassing us. And the more you mouth off, the louder he’s gonna say it. He’s going to accuse you by name of trashing his reputation in order to throw this election to his opponent. You coming here to try to sabotage our fund-raiser just gives him more ammunition.”
“Sabotage? I’m beginning to think you’re seriously paranoid.”
“Think whatever you want, sister. But if I was you, I’d watch my back.” Davis pushed by her roughly and was gone.
Was that a threat? By telling Melanie to watch her back, was Davis signifying an intent to get violent, to go to the mattresses? Filtered through his icy anger, the words had seemed deadly enough. Melanie decided that on balance, this encounter had been quite productive. Not only could she give the front office a heads-up on the scathing press she was about to receive, but she had a viable new suspect, one she hadn’t focused on carefully enough before.
But as she turned to leave, the unmistakable sound of a footfall in the long gallery froze Melanie in place. Somebody was out there, just beyond the twin statues of Sekhmet. The steps sounded like a man’s, and they were coming in her direction. Had Davis returned to make good on his threat?
Melanie ducked around behind the case holding the three coffins and peered through the glass, prepared to make a run for it if she saw him. But it wasn’t Davis. He’d been wearing a dark suit, and this guy had on a blue blazer with brass buttons. She couldn’t see his face, but he was big and blond. Big and blond, big and blond. What was she remembering? Male, big, and heavyset, probably white, David Harris had told them about the man he’d seen in the Ramble. But no, this didn’t add up. Killers didn’t buy their clothes at Brooks Brothers, not in her experience. She was just about to emerge from behind the glass case when he spoke.
“I know you’re in there,” he said.
And he reached into his pocket and pulled something out. Melanie saw the bright glint of metal. A gun, a knife? She backed up fast and slammed into a huge marble sarcophagus. Her head connected with the stone and she grunted in pain. She looked around for an exit, but the gallery came to a dead end. The only way out was back between the statues, right past her pursuer.
“You can run, but you can’t hide,” he called out, and this time Melanie listened to his voice. It was deep and resonant, with a heavy Australian accent.
She stepped around the case, so mad she could have spit.
“What the hell are you doing, Gilmartin?”
“I’m working on a breaking story, Vargas.” He pushed a button on the small silver tape recorder he carried. “Duncan Gilmartin reporting from the Clyde Williams benefit at the Metropolitan Museum, speaking with Assistant U.S. Attorney Melanie Vargas.”
“Put that thing away!” she snapped.
“I’m giving you a chance to respond to the allegations,” he said. “I’d take it if I were you, or things might get unpleasant.”
“What allegations?”
“The allegations of a cover-up. The allegations that Clyde Williams will go scot-free despite all the evidence pointing to his involvement.”
“Don’t you people worry about libel laws?”
“Oh, we study them carefully, looking for loopholes. Truth is a defense. It’s true Suzanne Shepard was murdered after she aired a segment on Clyde Williams. It’s true that you’re friends with the Williams family. What I make of that truth is protected speech.”
“Go to Clyde’s press conference. You’ll see what good friends we are.”
There were no limits to what this guy would do to advance his career. As Melanie looked at Gilmartin in disgust, something clicked. Something in his height and build, in the way he carried himself.
“Wait a minute, you followed me onto the subway the other day, didn’t you?” she said.
“I do what it takes to get the story, Miss Vargas.”
“Stay the hell away from me.”
Melanie turned and hurried toward the exit, pleased with herself for finding Gilmartin out, for refusing to let him get over on her. Then she realized that his tape recorder had been on the entire time. So much for outmaneuvering the tabloid press. She’d be hearing her bold words played back to her on the eleven o’clock news.
30
Melanie slept like the dead, and didn’t wake until eight o’clock on Saturday morning when she heard Maya chirping from her crib in the next room.
“Mama mama mama mama mama!”
She rushed into the nursery to find all of Maya’s stuffed animals on the floor and the little girl standing up holding on to the crib rail.
“How long have you been awake, pobrecita?” Melanie asked. “I’m so sorry. Mommy was really tired.”
“Toast!” Maya said.
“I’ll bet you’re hungry. Did you throw these poor babies down? Don’t do that, Maya. It makes them sad.”
Melanie bent over and started picking the animals up and tossing them back into the crib. Down the hall, the telephone shrieked, so she lifted Maya up and deposited her on the floor.
“Hold on, sweetie. I’ll change you in a sec,” she said, sprinting back to her room to catch the phone before the machine picked up. Melanie worried with each step that it was Susan calling to tell her she was fired. Susan had been very reassuring last night as they watched the eleven o’clock news together over the phone from their respective apartments. And in truth, not only had Clyde Williams’s press conference been better than Melanie had feared, but Duncan Gilmartin had restrained himself from playing the tape of her telling him to go to hell. Maybe he hadn’t liked the prospect of getting taken down a peg on national TV.
She swiped the phone from its cradle just in time. “Hello?”
“Melanie. Julian.”
“Julian,” she said, relieved. “What’s going on?”
“Good news. I popped your boy Miles Ortiz with enough product to put him away for a good long stretch.”
“How much?”
“Sixty grams of crystal meth.”
“Whoa. That’s a ten-year mandatory minimum.”
“He knows that. And now the man would like to talk.”
“Fantastic work. We need to hold a proffer session right away. Make sure you have him execute a Waiver of Speedy Arraignment first so we don’t have to take him to court today.” If Miles got arraigned in open court, his arrest would become public knowledge, and he’d no longer be useful to do undercover work for them.
“I’m not down with paperwork, sister,” Julian said. “Not my style. When you get here, you get him to sign whatever you want. I paged O’Reilly, and he’d like to participate in the debriefing, too.”
The mention of Dan’s name reminded her that she’d tried his cell phone three separate times last night to fill him in on what had happened at the museum, but with no success. She’d ended up leaving a curt message on his voice mail about how inconvenient it was not to be able to reach him, and he still hadn’t called back. Sitting awake last night in the chair in her bedroom with the phone in her hand, staring out at the sky, Melanie should have been worrying about the case or about her career. But instead she was in a panic over Dan’s mysterious disappearing act. If he’d been a different man—if he’d been Steve, certainly—Dan’s sudden change in behavior would be enough to convince her he was seeing someone else. That was the reason men made themselves unreachable, wasn’t it—to sneak off with other women? Given Melanie’s personal history, her mind naturally went there. But this was Dan O’Reilly, she told herself. He was incapable of infidelity.
As hard as she tried to believe that, Dan’s phone had kept on ringing. Finally, Melanie had dragged herself into bed and fallen into a dreamless sleep, blank and deep, hiding from her life.
“Where do you want us to meet you?” Julian asked, snapping her back to the present.
Before she could answer, Maya came toddling into the room, and another unpleasant truth dawned on Melanie. It was Saturday. Her babysitter didn’t work today. Steve was in L.A., and she hadn’t heard a peep out of him, and Sophie had more than done her duty by watching Maya while Melanie went to the fund-raiser last night. Melanie had an important suspect to debrief and her boss’s wedding to attend. But in order to do those things, she needed to find somebody to watch her daughter.
She picked Maya up and kissed the top of her dark head.
“I’ll see you at my office in an hour,” she told Julian.
An hour later, Melanie struggled out of a taxi in front of her office with Maya on her hip, her dress for the wedding draped over her arm, and a diaper bag full of toys, snacks, and videos hanging off her shoulder. Melanie’s mother, Carol, would take Maya starting at three o’clock and keep her overnight. Carol helped out when she could, but she had a job and an active social life to work around. For the hours between now and then, Melanie had come up empty-handed. Steve hadn’t returned from his business trip or made any arrangements for Maya’s care despite the fact that this was his weekend. Sophie Cho was working on a rush project all weekend herself. And Melanie’s glamorous sister, Linda, was on assignment in Miami for her job as an entertainment reporter with a Spanish TV network. That left Melanie with two options. Either she could bring Maya into the debriefing with Miles Ortiz, who was a thug, a meth dealer, and possibly a killer. Or she could leave her seventeen-month-old alone in a separate room where she couldn’t see her, with only a Barney video for company, at a moment when some psycho creep might or might not be stalking Melanie.
Signing in at the guard’s desk in the lobby, she saw that Shekeya Jenkins had come in an hour before. Beneath Shekeya’s signature, two other names were printed in childish letters—Khadija and Rashida, Shekeya’s little girls, who were seven and five. Melanie stopped on the Major Crimes floor on her way to the war room, and poked her head in to the chief’s suite to commiserate. Shekeya was at her computer. Her daughters sat on the floor nearby with their coloring books.
“Hey, girl. You brought reinforcements, too, I see,” Shekeya said, smiling at the sight of Maya.
Khadija, the older child, jumped up and ran over to Melanie.
“Can I hold the baby?” she pleaded. Melanie set Maya down. She immediately began giggling and running around in circles, which made Shekeya’s girls crack up.
“They’re getting so big,” Melanie said.
“I haven’t brought ’em into work in a while, so you haven’t seen ’em.”
“You’re working overtime?” Melanie asked.
“Actually, I’m filling out the application for the paralegal position. I waited till today so there wouldn’t be any chance of the boss showing up to look over my shoulder.”
“She’s getting her hair and makeup done, right?” Melanie asked.
“Mmm-hmm. I have the place to myself. By the way, thank you for the letter of recommendation. I know how busy you are, but you still found time to do it.”
“No problem.”
“What are you here for?” Shekeya asked.
“Proffer session.”
“You’re not bringing Little Miss Thang to meet your bad guy, are you?” Shekeya asked disapprovingly.
“I don’t have a choice. I got caught with no babysitting.”
“I hear you. Kwame’s working today, and my sister’s putting on a potluck at her church. That’s why I brought these two in. But leave Miss Thang here. We’ll watch her for you.”
“Seriously?”
“Sure. My girls love babies. Especially pretty ones with hair they can fix. You’ll make their day. Don’t be
surprised if you get her back with a new hairstyle, though.”
31
Melanie sat in the war room on the sixth floor facing Miles Ortiz across the table. His eyes were glittery and sharp as ice picks. The left one was decorated with a jailhouse tattoo that looked like a stitched cut, as if Miles had just been sliced with a beer bottle in a bar fight. The pricey personal trainer dressed in pure gangsta-thug style—diamond studs in both ears, a nylon do-rag tied over his black hair, and a wifebeater T-shirt showing off lean, muscled arms. For the bored housewives of the Upper East Side, there was nothing sexier than violence.
Dan and Julian sat on either side of Miles. They’d been in place already when Melanie had arrived at the war room, putting to rest her faint hope of seeing Dan alone. She had plenty to ask him about. The status of his investigation into her Web stalker. Where Rockwell Davis and Clyde Williams had been at the time of Suzanne Shepard’s murder. And of course, why he’d ignored her phone calls again last night. But this debriefing was just too pressing. Her questions would have to wait.
Melanie slid a piece of paper across the table.
“You speak and read English?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” Miles said. His voice was a hoarse growl.
“This is a Waiver of Speedy Arraignment form. Saturday arraignments happen only in the mornings. We can either bring you before the judge right now, in which case your arrest becomes known and your value as a cooperator diminishes accordingly, or else you can sign this and wait until Monday morning, when we’ll try to arrange for a closed-courtroom arraignment. There are no Sunday arraignments, so if you want to do the debriefing, you’ll have to spend tonight and tomorrow night in jail before seeing a judge. Are you comfortable with that?”
“It true what Pierre say, I’m looking at a ten-to-life?” Ortiz asked.
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