Cover-up

by Michele Martinez

  “Let me go! You fucking asshole! You’re hurting me! Do you know who I am? My lawyer’s gonna squash you like a cockroach.”

  Melanie would make sure that Kim Savitt was released. Eventually. Kim had had no prior knowledge of the drug deal and had beat feet after she learned about it, so there was no probable cause to charge her with a crime. Nevertheless, getting hauled down to Central Booking and cut loose at the last minute before she was processed might be good for Kim. Might give her some time to think, to reevaluate her lifestyle and make better choices about how, and with whom, she spent her time. She ought to. She had a little girl to raise.

  Melanie got out of the car and went over to where Julian had Benedict Welch spread-eagled against a wall. Julian patted Welch down while other detectives retrieved the cases full of pseudoephedrine and cash and filled out evidence tags.

  “Let me see his identification,” Melanie said as Julian withdrew a Gucci wallet from the breast pocket of Welch’s tweed blazer.

  Melanie systematically went through the wallet. Every piece of identification in it—driver’s license, credit cards, medical board identification card, memberships to a golf club and to various museums, a Blockbuster video card—was in the name Benedict Harold Welch.

  Welch turned around. His eyes glinted savagely at Melanie through the unnatural violet lenses. She stared back at him with an expression of revulsion. In her mind’s eye, she was seeing Suzanne Shepard’s brutalized corpse, the left breast severed and hanging loose, the ugly word carved into her stomach. And she was reading those disgusting e-mails he’d written to her. He’d be locked away now, unable to harm her. She’d won.

  “What’s your name?” she demanded.

  “You know my name,” he replied, clearly taken aback.

  “I know it’s not Benedict Welch. The press calls you the Butcher, but I’m going to find out what your real name is.”

  He looked scared, which gratified her greatly. Hell, he was the one who’d taken this personal, so shoot her if she enjoyed seeing him squirm. Melanie nodded at Julian, who shoved Welch from behind toward the police cruiser that had pulled up beside them, its door yawning open to receive the prisoner.

  43

  The man who went by the name Benedict Welch was now in the MCC facing serious narcotics charges. But methamphetamine distribution was nothing compared to the heinous crime Melanie was convinced he’d committed. She planned to nail him for real, to prove he was the Central Park Butcher, to lock him in a dark place until the end of his days. And she planned to do it by tomorrow morning. She had to: that’s when the Butcher’s bail hearing was set for. She refused to let this man hit the street.

  The evidence was already strong enough that Melanie managed to get search warrants for Welch’s home and office out of Magistrate Judge Helen Boutros with little difficulty—and over the phone on a Sunday, no less. Trailed by Deputy U.S. Marshal Peter Terrozzi—who refused to leave her side no matter how much she begged him to or how loudly she reassured him that the Butcher was already in custody—Melanie went to Welch’s office. She’d left several messages for Dan O’Reilly asking him to meet her there to conduct the search.

  But neither one of the agents who awaited her on the chintz chairs of the reception area was Dan. They stood up in unison, virtual carbon copies of each other, young and brawny and squeaky-clean with short brown hair, part of the constant stream of new recruits flowing into the Bureau since 9/11.

  The slightly taller, slightly older-looking one spoke first.

  “Ma’am, Agent Ryan Waterman from the Bureau. My partner, Agent Brandon Mills. My supervisor informs me you need agents to execute a couple of search warrants.”

  “Are you guys assigned to this case?” Meaning, Who the hell are you?

  “As of now we are.”

  “Where’s Agent O’Reilly?”

  “Ma’am, following up another lead and unavailable to work this search.”

  Was Dan avoiding her? But he’d left her a couple of voice mails since last night asking her to call, so he obviously wanted to talk to her. She hadn’t returned either of them.

  “What about Agent Crockett, or any of the agents who attended the meeting yesterday?”

  “It’s Sunday, ma’am, and we’re new. Low men on the totem pole.”

  “Do either of you know anything about the Butcher case?”

  “No, ma’am, but we are warm bodies with two eyes and two hands. We can execute a search warrant.”

  “Have you done searches before?”

  “Numerous mock searches at Quantico,” Agent Waterman said.

  “I assisted a real search two weeks ago,” Agent Mills added, his chest puffing out.

  “Well, it seems I have no choice. I’ll take you, but you do everything I say, understood?”

  The agents glanced at each other uneasily. They might be new-bies, but they’d already managed to pick up the agents’ code that made it a point of honor to give prosecutors, especially female ones, a hard time.

  “Whatever. Just get in here,” she said.

  They followed her back to Welch’s office with the leather club chairs and big mahogany desk. She reminded them to photograph and diagram the place before they searched it.

  “Standard procedure, ma’am,” Agent Waterman said, though he’d been standing there the second before looking like he didn’t have a clue. The “ma’am” thing was starting to bug her, too. It made her feel old.

  “Fine. Just checking,” she said.

  Melanie fell into one of the cushy leather chairs and took a load off. Her eyes were burning and her head pounding; she could use a few minutes to catch her breath. When the agents were done diagramming and photographing, she gave them a copy of the warrant that listed the items they were allowed to search for. Melanie wasn’t supposed to touch anything herself; she was present only as a legal adviser. Judging from appearances, these two needed one.

  Both agents pulled on rubber gloves. A long credenza sat beneath the far windows beyond Welch’s desk. It was covered with files. Ryan walked over to it and lifted the top one.

  “Should I read every page of every file, ma’am?”

  “Call me Melanie. No, in fact, if a folder contains medical records, you shouldn’t read it at all. Medical records are privileged. But if you find something else, let me know.”

  Every file on the credenza contained medical records, so the search went quickly. The same was true of every file in the four cabinets lining the adjoining wall. But when the agents got to Welch’s desk, things got interesting.

  “All three drawers on the right-hand side of the desk are locked,” Ryan announced.

  Melanie, whose head had been drooping onto her chest in the comfortable depths of the chair, perked up instantly. It was a basic tenet of her profession that the presence of a lock usually indicated something worth hiding. And something worth hiding was generally worth finding.

  “The warrant allows you to search locked areas,” she said. “Do what you have to do to open the drawers. Obviously, try to keep the property damage to a minimum.”

  Ryan opened a duffel bag and pulled out a tool case, taking from it a tiny screwdriver. He jimmied the top lock easily. Melanie saw his eyebrows shoot up as he reached in with rubber-encased hands.

  Brandon moved in, blocking Melanie’s view. “Yes!” he crowed, pumping his fists as if he’d just scored a touchdown.

  “What have you got?” Melanie asked.

  “Sparkle,” Ryan said. “Jenny Crank. Redneck heroin. Hillbilly crack.”

  “Huh?”

  Brandon laughed. “Ryan means methamphetamine. You know how the Eskimos have fifty different words for snow? Well, the Bureau dug up Ryan working narcotics in Milwaukee. Meth’s the only drug they got out there in East Blowhole, unless you count sniffing gas. He has a million names for it.”

  Ryan snorted. “Stop making fun of things you don’t understand and grab me a few of them plastic evidence bags and the heat sealer.”

 
; Melanie came around the desk and watched as Ryan laid out a hefty haul of glassine envelopes on the fancy leather desk blotter. Each glassine held a small amount of a substance that had the consistency and appearance of sea salt.

  “Look how transparent it is,” Ryan said lovingly. “This is highly pure and very expensive meth. I counted. We’ve got fifty-seven doses here, more than half a G-pack. You want me to field-test one before I seal ’em all up for transport?”

  “Definitely,” Melanie said. “Welch is getting arraigned tomorrow morning. His lawyer is sure to spend the whole bail hearing talking about what a reputable member of the medical community Welch is. I’d love to fire back with the dangerous narcotics he keeps hidden in his office drawer, but I need to confirm this is really meth first.”

  “No problem. One field test, coming up.”

  Melanie watched Ryan break the seal on a fresh field-test kit labeled with the chemical name for meth. Slowly and carefully, he assembled his tools and pipetted a tiny amount of crystal from one of the glassines into a test tube. He squirted in a clear solution from a plastic bottle, swirled the mixture around, and set it to stand in a tray.

  “This’ll take a minute to react,” Ryan said.

  “I know Welch had a meth habit,” Melanie said as they waited. “But this is a lot of drugs. Do you think he was selling as well as using?”

  “He was doing both,” Ryan said.

  “How do you know?”

  “I know these drugs are for personal use because there’s a pipe in the drawer, see?” Ryan reached in a gloved hand and pulled out a glass pipe with a visible layer of gunk in the bottom.

  “It’s got obvious residue,” he continued, “so we know the pipe was used, if not by him, then presumably by someone else in his presence since he kept it locked in his desk. The reason I say the baggies were also meant for sale is that no icehead could smoke this much crank within sell-by date without going belly-up. Drugs go bad just like food. Any discerning junkie is gonna care how many days out of the lab his product is, and he won’t pay top dollar for anything older than a week. With shit this pure, I’d say if you’re doing two or three bags a day, that’s a pretty intense habit. Any more, and you’re incapacitated and can’t hold down a regular job. More than that, you’re dead. So what’s here is way too much for one man to use, at least if he wants it fresh.”

  “I wonder if Welch was selling to patients,” Melanie said, her mind racing. “But a really bad personal meth habit. That makes sense, too, you know? I mean, if Welch is the Butcher.”

  “What do you mean?” Ryan asked.

  “The murder we’re investigating was very brutal. That’s why the press came up with the nickname ‘Butcher.’ The victim was raped and stabbed so many times that one of her breasts was severed. The killer carved ‘bitch’ on her stomach with a scalpel. The crime was so ugly that I’d almost have trouble believing Welch committed it, despite how creepy I find him. Unless he was high on meth.”

  “The Scooby snacks mess with your head big-time,” Ryan said, nodding. He picked up the test tube. The liquid inside had turned cobalt blue. “And we have a yes! The substance has field-tested positive for the presence of methamphetamine, and I’m prepared to swear to that in court.”

  Ryan and Brandon went to work cleaning up the field test, sealing the glassine envelopes and the pipe into clear plastic evidence pouches and filling out the labels.

  “This is great evidence for our narcotics charges,” Melanie said. “But what I’m really looking for is evidence about the murder. I have the Butcher e-mailing from this office, but I also have three well-known plastic surgeons claiming Welch was with them in a fancy restaurant at the time of the crime. I refuse to believe Welch is innocent. Maybe the doctors are lying or maybe he had an accomplice. Either way, I need a trump card, something powerful enough to give the lie to his alibi.”

  Ryan picked up the small screwdriver he’d used to jimmy the top lock. “Time to find out what’s behind Door Number Two.”

  Melanie and Brandon watched as Ryan worked the screwdriver and eased open the middle drawer. Simultaneously, they all made noises of disappointment. The drawer appeared to be filled with…trash.

  “Garbage?” Melanie asked.

  “Well, now at least we’ve learned the guy has a serious Milky Way habit,” Ryan said, reaching in and pulling out a candy wrapper and tossing it over his shoulder. He pulled the drawer out wholesale and got ready to turn it upside down and dump the contents into the wastebasket next to the desk.

  “Wait!” Melanie commanded. “What are you doing? Lay everything out on the desk and go through it carefully.”

  “Ma’am, I can assure you that habitual methamphetamine users, if they eat at all, eat primarily candy and ice cream. This is exactly what it looks like—a bunch of grubby old garbage left over from his binges, with junkie cooties on every last piece.”

  “Agent, when you’re on the stand getting cross-examined by defense counsel about the manner in which you conducted this search, do you plan to testify that you picked up a pile of potentially valuable evidence and threw it in the trash without looking at it because you were afraid of a few junkie cooties?” she asked.

  Ryan stopped what he was doing and gazed at her. “No, ma’am.”

  “Then inspect each item, please. You’re wearing rubber gloves, anyway.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Ryan dumped the pile of trash out onto on the desk blotter. As Brandon began picking carefully through candy wrappers and crumpled Cheetos bags, examining each one, Ryan bent down to replace the drawer. He stopped in midflight.

  “What? Do you see something?” Melanie asked.

  Ryan fitted the drawer back in place, then reached in and removed a plastic baggie that had been Scotch-taped way at the back. The baggie had been invisible under all the trash.

  “Okay, you were right,” Ryan said, grinning at Melanie sheepishly. “But I have a good excuse. This is way more finesse than you’d ever see from a crankhead in Milwaukee. They’re all too wrecked to think about hiding evidence.”

  “Life in the big city. Even the junkies outclass Ryan,” Brandon said.

  “Blow me, Mills,” Ryan said.

  “Yo, keep it polite, dude. Ladies present.”

  “Let me see that.” Melanie held out her hand, her voice husky with excitement. She took the baggie and raised it up to the light. The small white rectangle inside was crusted with dried blood, but not so much that Melanie couldn’t make out Suzanne Shepard’s smiling face in the lower left-hand corner.

  “What is it?” Ryan asked.

  “The victim’s driver’s license. It was taken from her wallet by the Butcher as a sort of grisly souvenir. Gentlemen, everybody who said three respectable doctors would never lie was mistaken. We’ve discovered evidence proving that Benedict Welch murdered Suzanne Shepard. He is the Central Park Butcher.”

  44

  But when Melanie called Mark Sonschein to crow about her new evidence, he delivered some deflating news. Mark and Dan O’Reilly had been at the hospital showing photographs to David Harris, and they’d showed him the mug shot of Benedict Welch taken earlier that day.

  “Please,” Melanie said, squeezing her eyes shut, “don’t tell me Harris clears Welch. I have such powerful evidence on the guy now. I can’t go back to square one, I just can’t.”

  “Harris doesn’t actually clear him,” Mark said. “What he says is less definitive than that. You see, Harris never got a good look at the Butcher’s face. During the Suzanne Shepard murder, the Butcher wore night-vision goggles. And when Harris was kidnapped, the Butcher was sitting in the front seat of a limo with a tinted-glass barrier between them.”

  “So what’s the problem, then?” Melanie demanded.

  “He says the hair is wrong.”

  “The hair? Give me a freaking break.”

  “Look, I know you want this to be over, but we take the evidence as we find it, Melanie. That’s what we do.”
/>   She sighed. “What about the hair?”

  “Welch has this longish, very yellow hair. It’s obviously dyed, right? Harris says the Butcher was blond, also. But he was staring at the back of his head on the whole limo ride, and he’s very clear that the Butcher has close-cropped, naturally dark blond hair. Virtually a crew cut. And a big, thick neck. Welch is tall but he’s not robust. The descriptions don’t match.”

  “We’re talking about a witness who only saw the Butcher from behind! And through tinted glass. That’s meaningless.”

  “Would you be arguing that if Harris thought Welch did look like the Butcher?” Mark asked.

  “Easy for you to say. He’s not after you,” Melanie muttered.

  “I’m very cognizant of the threat to you, Melanie. That’s what makes me want to be sure that we’ve got the right man. I’m not saying Harris’s information is definitive, or that we should cut Welch loose. But I think it raises serious questions.”

  “There’s a simple way to settle this,” Melanie said, “and if I hadn’t been so busy with these search warrants, I would have seen to it by now. We need to have Welch’s DNA tested.”

  The problem was, the only way Melanie knew to get FBI technicians to show up when and where she needed them was to have Dan O’Reilly place the call. Dan was third-generation New York City law enforcement, a local boy. In New York, where circles were smaller than outsiders could possibly imagine, being from a family on the job counted for a huge amount. Cops had their own churches, their own rec leagues and Catholic schools—hell, their own entire suburbs. Dan was savvier than his true-blue, no-nonsense persona would suggest; and when it came to using his connections and pulling strings, he had no rival.