Gigi Doyle had denied that her sister had been assaulted at the Lakeview apartment that night. Yet Doyle had been so nervous. Something was missing from the story, a bothersome tickle in Winter’s mind, a gnawing.
Woodson was lawyered up over the shooting. There might be a deal to be made, although Winter would be pissed if he had to let Woodson plea down on shooting at a cop only to find out Woodson had nothing to do with either the assault or the Gruse murder. It wasn’t just because he had been the one shot, he’d have felt the same way about any other cop.
Still, Woodson could be involved. Gruse assaults Upton, she gets Goodson to kill him. Goodson had some drug priors. He could have used that to lure Gruse to a meet.
Or the blackmail idea, a Gruse photo of Ayers, either with Mance or with Upton the night of the assault. Both good reasons for Ayers and Gruse to meet. The two fought, or maybe Ayers had only meant to scare Gruse into giving up the photo, but things got out of hand.
Every time Winter talked to someone more possibilities arose.
He’d drive by the Lakeview anyway. He checked to make sure he had the tablet and it was charged. When he turned it on, the first photo that popped up was Melanie Upton’s, a picture that Cindy had found on the web.
Winter knew there was some way he could access the internet from the tablet, but he hadn’t learned how. He felt like a dinosaur, all this new technology, threatening his very existence if he didn’t get on board.
He punched Cindy up on his cell, hoping to catch her. “You in the office?”
“Just leaving you a note and packing up. That list I sent to Los Angeles of the women Gruse had photographed? None of them reported a stalker, as far as we can tell. Logan’s contact was helpful—he’s going to pass the list on to other jurisdictions, easier and faster than us doing it.”
“Great. What I was calling you about—the photo of Upton you put on my tablet. Any way to tell who took it?”
“It might be credited, wait, let me pull up the website. Sure, here it is. Tim Tazik. He has a website. He’s local, it lists an address on Congress. Two sixty one.”
Two sixty one Congress turned out to be in the older part of Marburg’s downtown area, a stretch of stately mid nineteenth century homes leading into what were once early industrial age storefronts and businesses. The area had run down, then been extensively renovated and gentrified.
The display windows in Tim Tazik’s studio displayed a tasteful and varied array of photos, ranging from commercial work to weddings. As Winter was about to enter, a late fortyish man was coming out, a camera bag over his shoulder. He had slicked back hair, brilliant white teeth, a little gray on the temples, and was wearing a heathered polo shirt and chinos.
“Would you be Tim Tazik?” asked Winter.
“I am. I’m sorry, I’m just closing, I have to go to a shoot. I can take your name, or you can walk with me to my car.”
Winter introduced himself and said, “Did you take some photos of Melanie Upton?”
Tazik’s hand hesitated with his key in the lock. “Melanie? Sure, a few.”
“I know about the ones on her website. Any others?”
Tazik finished locking up. “Some. Why?”
“How do you know her?”
Tazik pointed to his display window. “I’m the best known photographer in Marburg. I’m not bragging, I’ve just been around the longest, and I do good work. Just about anyone who needs a photograph has probably at least talked to me. I do a lot of work for actresses and actors, I’m even the official photographer for the summer theater. Melanie is a local actress. She found me.”
Winter sensed an undercurrent of affected disinterest when Tazik spoke about Upton. Tazik was wearing a wedding ring, so Winter took a shot. “You and Upton, do you two get together outside of the studio?”
Tazik opened his mouth, closed it, looked over Winter’s shoulder at two ladies strolling along the street, and said, “Maybe we’d better go inside.” He unlocked the door, led Winter in. “Is it okay if I just make a quick call, tell them I’ll be late?”
“Sure.”
Tazik set down his camera bag, pulled out his cell, hit a speed dial, and said, “Hey Joanna. I’m running a few minutes late. Can you get them started? Thanks.” He clicked off. “My assistant.”
“Tell me about Melanie Upton.”
“What do you want to know?”
“She’s made some accusations about Jason Ayers. I’m investigating that.”
Tazik shrugged. “I heard. She didn’t say anything to me about it, if that’s what you are after.”
“So you two—spend time together?”
Tazik’s eyes narrowed. “She didn’t claim I did anything, did she?”
“No. Might she?”
Tazik appeared to be deciding what to say. “Shit, I don’t know. I can’t imagine why she would, I’ve done nothing but help her out.”
“How?”
“Taking pictures, most of them without charge. I did that shoot at the press conference, the one that went viral? As a favor. I even brought her to a party so she could make some contacts. She’s a good actress, or will be, once she gets her chance.”
“You do this for a lot of clients? Work for free? What do you get out of it?” Tazik’s pained expression told Winter what he needed to know. “Look, I’m not the morality police. You two have a thing, that’s your business. But before I ask you anything else, I would like to know if you are still in a relationship.”
“So you’ll know whether to believe me?”
Winter didn’t see any reason not to admit it. “Pretty much.”
“Does this need to get out?”
“You brought her to a party, people must know about you two.”
“No, not really. That kind of thing happens all the time, agents and producers showing up with actresses, models. Think of it as a business meet and greet. To answer your other question, we don’t have what you might think of as a relationship. It’s more an on and off hookup. Mostly when Melanie needs something.”
“Like?”
“Usually just a photo.”
“Did Melanie ever ask you to take a photo of Jason Ayers?”
“Just the one at the press conference.”
“How about anyone else? I mean, take photos of anyone else?”
Tazik laughed. “You must not know Melanie very well. Melanie would only want photos of herself.”
That sounded right to Winter. “You know Suzanne Mance?”
“The actress? Of her. Never met.”
“So Melanie never asked you to take a photo of her?”
Tazik frowned. “No, why?”
“It’s complicated,” said Winter.
“Why would Melanie want photos of Jason Ayers and Mance?” Tazik’s puzzled expression slowly slid into a grin. “I get it. Melanie thinks—or you think she thinks—that Ayers and Mance are having an affair.”
Winter was pretty good at poker, but he must have waited a second too long to deflect Tazik’s thought process, because Tazik said, “Now that would be a photo. But I’m not the guy for that kind of stuff. I didn’t even want to do the press conference, Melanie twisted my arm, and I thought she had some publicity stunt worked out with the show.”
“Who would be the guy to take that kind of photo?”
“Anybody with a camera who wanted to make a quick buck. But if you’re asking about professionals, check some of the paparazzi types. We don’t have many in Marburg, because there aren’t that many celebrities to follow around. Boston has some.”
“How about this guy?” asked Winter, pulling up Gruse’s photo on the tablet.
“He looks familiar. Sure. I met him at a camera shop. I think he was trying to sell some equipment. I forget his name. Said he was from LA, took celebrity photos. I told him there wasn’t much of that around here. He said he had something big cooking, I don’t know if he was bullshitting or not.”
Something big? thought Winter. Maybe blackmail? “What do you reme
mber about him?”
“Just a guy. Twenties—he gave me the impression he was trying to show off. Maybe a little for me, a little for Jenny, she works at the camera store. I didn’t think much of it, I might have sounded the same way at his age.”
“Anything else?”
“He asked about my work, I even showed him some photos of a book I’m putting together. He seemed interested.”
“What kind of photos?” Winter was wondering if it was about celebrities after all.
“Artistic shots of tattoos, different people, different bodies, I morph them together to create a new person and new ink.” Tazik pulled out his phone, turned it to Winter. “Here are some shots. This is probably exactly what I showed to your guy.”
Winter flipped through the photos, nothing interesting to him. Few of the photos even showed faces, just parts of bodies with tattoos.
What did interest him was the date on a photo of a woman’s thigh, the tattoo an interlocking series of whorled rings surrounded by a row of triangular patterns.
June 12th.
“Who is this?” Winter asked.
Tazik gave Winter a sheepish grin. “That’s Melanie. She has nice ink.”
“You took this on June 12th?”
“That’s the date stamp. Just before midnight.”
“You were with her that night?”
Tazik put up his hands. “Guilty.”
“I told you, I don’t care about that. How long were you with her?”
“Who am I getting into trouble?”
“Maybe you, if I have to have this conversation again with you in front of your wife.”
“Hey, I though you said you weren’t the morality police?”
“I’m not. But this is important. Come on, how long?”
Tazik gave in. “All night. We got a room at a hotel up in Marlborough. Actually it was the first time we hooked up.”
“You’re sure she was there all night?”
“Yeah. We watched the Tony’s, had some champagne, I got her to let me take the photos, one thing led to another . . . she slipped out pretty early in the morning. It was light out, maybe seven thirty?”
Pieces falling into place in Winter’s head, the timeline. Melanie Upton had called 911 that very morning, claiming she’d been assaulted the night before. Not by Tazik, but by Jason Ayers. So either Tazik had assaulted her, and she’d pretended it was Ayers, or Melanie had made it all up. “Melanie never hinted around to you about—about you not being appropriate with her?”
“We were pretty inappropriate together. I can’t imagine why she’d claim otherwise.”
“Did you watch her on The Other Woman?”
“I caught a YouTube, why?”
“You remember it?”
“It was vintage Melanie. Hot vibe, doing her thing.”
“You remember the part about Jason Ayers?”
“She mentioned the party—that’s the party I brought her to, the one where she ran into Jason and Ashley Hanna. Christ, what a soap opera.”
“If you watch that tape again, you might want to focus on what she said she was doing the night Ayers might have assaulted her.”
“What?”
“Watching the Tony Awards on tv.”
Tazik’s head snapped up. “You got to be shitting me.”
“I’m not. So if there’s something you want to tell me about that night, maybe things getting a little out of hand, now’s the time.”
“You mean that I assaulted her, and she blamed it on Ayers?”
Winter shrugged. “Something like that.” He hesitated, letting it all sink in. “If there is DNA . . .”
“Aww, shit,” said Tazik. He grabbed his hair, bunching it in his fingers. “I swear to God, it was all consensual. She drove her own car to the hotel. I know that doesn’t prove anything, but I’m telling you—we hooked up after that night again, more than once. She wouldn’t have come back for more if I’d assaulted her.”
“This is your business,” said Winter. “But if I were you, I’d get some proof of those other times. Just in case.”
Winter left Tazik in his studio, the guy too stunned to even remember his photography session. Winter didn’t believe Tazik had assaulted Melanie Upton. Sure, he could have—it would likely be Tazik’s DNA in Upton’s SAFE kit. Winter would keep it as a possibility, another line in his mental map of connections.
What Winter did know for sure was that Tazik was a perfect cover for Upton’s story; a married guy who’d be highly unlikely to announce that Melanie’s insinuation about Ayers was fake. To do so, Tazik would have to tell the world he was the one who had been with her that night.
Winter was beginning to realize that Melanie Upton was more than just a good actress. She was very, very, smart.
CHAPTER 41
Winter sat in the parking lot of the Marriott in Marlborough. Nine p.m., the lot surprisingly full for a Thursday. Winter wasn’t here to check Tazik’s claim that he was with Melanie Upton; he’d probably need a subpoena for that, and Marlborough was out of his jurisdiction. It could be done, but he would need more evidence that Upton had committed a crime. At this point, all she’d done was vaguely insinuate an assault.
Winter had solved cases by putting himself in the shoes of the criminals, but he was having a hard time doing that with any of the players in these possibly connected cases. Upton, most of all. She was a chameleon, able to switch at will from a carefree, slightly ditsy self centered careerist to a charming vixen to a wounded victim. Winter had dealt with plenty of proficient liars, but never one with acting skills. He’d even started calling her Melanie in his head; he couldn’t remember the last time he had used a first name to mentally refer to either a victim or a suspect.
So he’d driven to Marlborough, thirty minutes from the northern boundary of Marburg. If he couldn’t put himself in Upton’s head, he could at least put himself where she’d been. According to Tazik she’d left in the early morning. Winter was too wired to wait until morning light tomorrow; he felt on the verge of a breakthrough and wanted to push. He needed to determine once and for all if these two cases might be connected, and possibly hone in on how. At the least, eliminate some of the strands in his ever growing complexity of linkages.
He headed back to Marburg, taking the most likely route Upton would use to go home. Not much real highway here, the main connecting road often interrupted by traffic lights. Just over a half hour later Winter pulled to the curb across from Upton’s apartment.
The Indian restaurant was busy. The night was warm enough that the outdoor tables were full. The door which led to the stairway was closed, Upton’s apartment dark. If anyone had gone up to Upton’s they would have needed a key, unless the stairway door had been propped open as it had been when Winter had first been there. Either way, Upton’s visitor would have had to walk right by the restaurant if he had come when it was open. Far down the street, a neon red bar sign was the only other indication of life.
It was improbable anyone had broken in early in the evening. The middle of the night was more likely, which supported Upton’s story. Yet Tazik had said she’d been with him all night. Why would he lie about that? It would only get him in deeper trouble with his wife should he have to come clean about his dalliances with Upton.
Unless Tazik was in on the fake Jason Ayers assault story and was covering for Upton. That didn’t make sense; he’d practically ruled out that she could have been assaulted that night. Right now, Tazik was Ayers’s best alibi, even more believable than Suzanne Mance.
Upton had made her 911 call not from here, but from her sister’s. Winter rolled off, across the railroad tracks, again following what he thought would be the fastest route.
At the Lakeview, Winter parked where he had a clear view of Gigi Doyle’s front door. From here, it would be easy to see anyone coming in or out. A dim glow peeked from the edges of the front window. No light was on in the bath or second bedroom. A security light on the end of the building illuminated a w
ide swath around Doyle’s apartment at the far side. Past that, about fifty feet of lawn, then the next apartment unit began, also brightly lit.
The drapes on the unit next to Doyle’s were partially open, revealing figures moving across the window. Just beyond, another security light. Anyone visiting Doyle’s apartment would be visible by at least twenty apartment units.
Winter drove back out of the lot. Just before the main entrance was a second road. He eased down it. To his right was a six foot fence he couldn’t see through. To his left was the back side of the apartment complex.
The roadway widened to a small paved lot, two medium sized dumpsters and an electrical panel, then continued on past to the next series of apartments. Winter got out of the car. It was much darker here than in front, no lights pointing toward the dumpsters, probably to keep them less noticeable. No large security lights mounted on the building like in the front, although some of the units had floods. A few of them turned on as Winter walked down the road, which he now suspected was a service alley to access the dumpsters.
A small fence surrounded Gigi Doyle’s tidy garden. The drapes were pulled tight, no light leaking from either the living room area or the bedroom. It would be easy to pull into this alley and enter from the back door or break in. Or even park up the street, outside of the Lakeview parking area, and walk in.
Ayers would have had to drive from Boston. Easy enough at night, unless Mance gave him an alibi. Winter would check the security video for a Range Rover anyway. And a motorcycle; Woodson was probably stupid enough to drive his here, although he could have taken one of the repair cars from the garage.
Gruse could have been here in twenty minutes after leaving the bar where he’d been in the fight. It was easy to imagine Gruse, humiliated after being beaten up, driving here and taking out his frustration on Upton. Gruse had certainly stalked her; if others had seen Upton here, he easily could have. First thing in the morning, Winter would be back to talk to those two groundskeepers.
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