He rumbled some more, which I took to be a sigh of resignation. “All right. So explain to me how the intruder or intruders who set up your projection booth for you provide any evidence whatsoever that your projectionist didn’t have something to do with the pirated videos. And try to stick to something resembling facts, because theories that begin with ‘you just don’t know the kid like I do’ really don’t hold up all that well in court.”
“It’s simple,” I said. I stood up, to pace around. It doesn’t help, but it looks good. “The person—or people— trying to make it look like Anthony had a hand in the piracy and the murder don’t know that I spoke to him. They don’t know I’m aware he’s away someplace shooting this movie of his. They think I’m still as much in the dark about his whereabouts as everyone else.”
“Which you are.” Dutton was listening closely, all cop now, his hands clasped in front of him, thinking.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, all you got was a phone call that, for all you know, came from across the street. Anthony could easily be here in town, operating out of someone’s basement, or with some friends over on campus in New Brunswick. There’s absolutely no reason to take him at his word.”
“You don’t know the kid like I do,” I said with little enthusiasm.
“Uh-huh.”
“He was shooting a movie. I heard the tumult and the crew behind him.” It wasn’t much, but it was something.
“You heard other people talking. It could have been a bowling alley or a Laundromat for all you know.” Okay, maybe it wasn’t something, after all.
“You could probably get my phone records and see where the call came from, couldn’t you?”
Dutton was about to answer when the door opened, and a uniformed officer I hadn’t seen before walked in and handed Dutton a sheet of paper.
“Yeah,” Dutton said. He took the paper from the uniform, nodded, and watched the officer leave. I wondered why I was there for any of this.
Dutton spent a good deal of time scanning the paper.
“My phone records,” I reminded him.
“Yeah, I’ll have to get you to sign a waver for them before you leave,” Dutton said. He scanned the papers. “They’re not terribly interesting, really.”
It took me a moment to realize what he was saying. “Those are my phone records?” I asked, pointing to the paper in his hand. Dutton nodded. “You just went ahead and got them without getting permission from me?”
Dutton looked at me over his half-glasses. “You obstructed an ongoing murder investigation for three full days after getting this phone call and you’re going to lecture me on procedure?” he asked. Okay, so he had a point. I peered over his desk at the paper, and tried to make out the number highlighted on the sheet in front of him. I can read upside down, but not fluently.
“So, what do the phone calls show?” I asked. “If I’m not prying, what with it being my phone and all.”
“Well, the call is here, Saturday morning right before one a.m.,” he began. “But it doesn’t really prove anything. It’s from a cell phone registered in Los Angeles, but on the Verizon network. Call could have come from a lot of places.”
“Is one of them across the street, or from someone’s basement in New Brunswick?”
Dutton’s eyes narrowed. “Let’s assume for a moment that your projectionist isn’t the one setting up the screenings at night. Who else could it be?”
“I haven’t a clue,” I told him honestly. “There aren’t that many people who really understand the workings of that kind of machine.”
“Okay.” Dutton nodded in agreement. “Let’s start with the basics. Access. Who could possibly have been in the projection booth on the nights when the Phantom Threader appeared?”
“The Phantom Threader?”
“What do you prefer? ‘The Projectionist Who Wasn’t There’?”
I tried to remember that I had to show some respect for the office, if not the man. It’s like the president. “Don’t go into film marketing as your second career, Chief,” I said.
He ignored me almost as well as if Sharon had been giving him lessons. “How about the popcorn girl?”
“Sophie?” I laughed out loud. “Sophie doesn’t even know how to work the popcorn machine. I have to set it up for her every night.”
“She could be putting that on. Anthony could have showed her, since I’m assuming you haven’t.”
I shook my head. “You’re giving her too much credit. Sophie can’t even get Goth together on a convincing basis.”
“Well, no one else is there every night except for . . . Who’s that guy who’s there every night? The one who told us about Ansella’s supposed girlfriend?”
“Leo?” Dutton, who had been looking through his notes for the name, pointed at me: yes. I rewarded him with an expression of supreme skepticism. “Leo is a crusty little old guy who used to work in the merchant marine. He messed up his right hand with a fishhook, and doesn’t really have the use of all his fingers. Believe me, you’d need all your fingers to work that monster in my booth.”
Dutton pursed his lips, but nodded in agreement. “But it doesn’t happen every night, does it?”
“No.”
“So what can you remember about the nights when your gremlins were on the job? Was there anyone special who was there every time?”
I gave that some thought. And the more I thought about it, the more my stomach felt like I’d eaten a freezing plate of slush for breakfast. Nah; it couldn’t have been. But Dutton saw it on my face.
“Who?”
I sat back down. “It can’t be. No. Now that I think of it, it’s somebody who wasn’t even there one of the times . . . no.”
His voice was considerably more basso this time, and his eyes darker. He drew the word out: “Who?”
“Leslie Levant.”
And the scary part was, Dutton looked like that was the answer he’d expected.
35
“It’s not possible,” I said. “Leslie wasn’t there the night the powdered sugar was dumped on the popcorn. You can check your log books. She was on patrol that night. And the projector was threaded up when I got there.”
Chief Dutton’s house was a comfortable split-level on a quiet street in Midland Heights. He’d decided that our conversation was going to take a turn that might not be best expressed in police headquarters, no matter how closed his office door was. So we came back here, and were currently sitting in his eat-in kitchen. Dutton had taken out smoked turkey and rolls from his refrigerator, and was looking as domestic as he could, considering he resembled Gentle Ben more closely than Martha Stewart.
“She couldn’t have been there ahead of you that day?” He spread mustard on one half of his roll and started assembling a sandwich. I rummaged through the refrigerator (with permission from the chief, of course) for low-fat mayonnaise, which is roughly the same as low-fat fat, an oxymoron.
“Nobody can be there ahead of me on any day,” I answered him. “I have the keys to the front door, and nobody else does.”
“Not even Anthony? He let these piracy people in, didn’t he? And would you get me a diet black cherry, while you’re there?”
I got a can of soda as requested, which helped me find the mayo, since that was hiding in the far reaches of the second shelf behind the beverages. It was a very well-organized refrigerator. “No, not even Anthony has the front door key. He could get the keys to the basement, which he apparently used to let the pirates in, but not the front door. I have the only one. Nobody has the keys to Comedy Tonight except me. Nobody gets to the theatre ahead of me.”
Dutton chuckled, Fred Flintstone in a mellow mood. “He let the pirates in. It sounds like Captain Jack Sparrow was running around in your theatre.”
“Are you sure you’re a cop? Is there a diploma or something I can see?”
He gave me a droll look, and said, “I’d be happy to give you a really good look at my gun, if you insist.”
Dutton’s face betrayed him: he thought about denying it, then decided against it. He nodded. “I’m always concerned about things I can’t explain, especially when they involve my officers,” he began. “Officer Levant bought a new car recently. She moved into a new apartment, a larger one. Threw a party for her fellow officers when she moved in, and showed off the new furniture and appliances. Took a trip to Rome two months ago. That all costs money. Any one of them alone wouldn’t be suspicious. All of them, in a relatively short period of time with no pay increase, makes you wonder.”
I started filling a sandwich roll with sliced turkey. I looked across the table at him. Dutton never seemed to be seriously worried about anything—he maintained an aura of calm no matter what, and seemed to have a very strong inner barometer. He said what he had to say, but didn’t tell you everything, ever.
“But there was no connection to this case specifically. Couldn’t she have been taking kickbacks from businesses, protection, the usual graft?”
Dutton’s eyes flashed anger. “Not in my town,” he said. “That doesn’t happen. In my department, there is no ‘usual graft.’ When I see someone spending more than they should, with no obvious increase in their income, I get suspicious immediately, and I act as soon as I can.”
“Sorry,” I said, and I meant it. “But couldn’t the extra money be attributed to her divorce?”
“She’s been divorced three years,” Dutton said, and it occurred to me how little I knew about Leslie. “Where’s the money been for three years?” I couldn’t answer. “Besides, ” he seemed to think of something. “There was something else.”
I waited. Dutton put his hands to his temples. “This can’t go beyond this room, you understand?” he asked. I nodded my head. It seemed that speaking would be somehow inappropriate.
“Who found the pirated DVDs?” he asked me. “You were there.”
“Officer Patel,” I said.
Dutton shook his head. “No. Officer Levant led him down there. She discovered the cartons, and then sent him back up to tell O’Donnell.”
That didn’t seem so significant. “So?”
“Think about it,” Dutton said. “An ambitious young officer makes a discovery like that, has a chance to impress her chief and the county prosecutor’s investigator, and she goes out of her way to give another the glory? It doesn’t make sense. Unless . . .”
“Unless she already knew the discs were there, and she wanted to distance herself from them,” I said. “How did you know she found the discs? Patel told you?”
Dutton nodded. “He felt bad about taking the credit. But think: Officer Levant has been all over the murder case, but hasn’t brought anything to the piracy case. And I had specifically assigned her to the piracy case to see what she’d bring in. Yet everything she’s discovered herself has been about the murder: the bottle of clonidine and the idea that Ansella was at the theatre with his best friend’s wife. The idea that Amy Ansella was at Comedy Tonight the night of the murder. Any idea where she might have gotten that one?” I remained silent. “That’s what I thought.”
I considered Dutton’s argument. “No,” I said. “I don’t buy it. All that’s circumstantial. And that still doesn’t address the fact that Leslie wasn’t there the night of the powdered sugar incident.”
Dutton smiled. “Can’t you stop saying things like ‘powdered sugar incident’? It’s hard to remain professional.” He shook his head, seemingly to clear it. “If Officer Levant wasn’t at the theatre that night, but she was all the other times the projector was readied ahead of time, what does that tell us?”
“That it wasn’t her.”
He shook his head, this time to say no. “It tells us it probably wasn’t her that night,” he said. “We have to assume there were others in on the piracy scheme. One person didn’t do all of this.”
“You thought Anthony did it all by himself.”
Dutton looked amused. “Did I?”
“You did. And what makes you think Leslie even knows how to run the projector? I’m lucky I know how to do it. And I’ve gotta tell you, you and Leslie weren’t having much luck changing reels the night I saw you in there.” There! I hadn’t thought of that before.
Dutton looked at his sandwich and frowned. “I should have gotten some ham,” he said.
“Ha! I got you.”
“You were the one who first brought up Officer Levant as a suspect, not me,” he reminded me. Guilt isn’t inflicted only by parents.
“I don’t believe Leslie did it. I’m sorry I said anything.” I put down my sandwich. It wasn’t much of a gesture of anguish, but it was the best I could do in this setting. “There’s no evidence, and here we are, convicting a lovely young woman of crimes we can’t possibly know she committed. ”
“You are sleeping with her, aren’t you?” Dutton pointed an accusing finger at me.
I looked away. “No,” I said. “We’re taking a break from each other . . .”
He looked heavenward, but didn’t seem to get any divine inspiration for his effort. “Why can’t you ever just tell me something the first time?” he scowled.
“Look, Chief,” I said. “I’ve only known you a few weeks. I don’t trust you, and you don’t trust me. That’s okay. But look at this from my point of view. My main concern here is Anthony. If I tell you something before I can consider it, and I don’t know how you’ll react, I could do him serious harm. And if there’s someone I’m responsible for, and the question is whether to do them harm or not, I’m always going to come down on the side of not. That means being cautious with you.”
“You’re not Anthony Pagliarulo’s father,” Dutton said quietly.
“No, but his father asked me to find out what happened. His father thinks it’s his fault because he asked Anthony to pick up a prescription.”
Dutton washed down the remainder of his sandwich with black cherry diet soda, which is one step above drinking Drano, in my opinion. But to each his own. “It’s not his father’s fault. But the prescription presents more questions.”
I sighed. “What about the prescription? What about Ansella’s dying from poisoned popcorn? There’s no evidence Ansella even knew about the pirated videos, let alone had anything to do with them. Even if Leslie did know how to thread the projector, a lot of this still isn’t explained.”
“That’s the problem with this case. There’s no evidence of anything.” Dutton eyed the counter and, I thought, contemplated making another sandwich. He shook his head and started the cleanup.
I nodded. “Nothing adds up yet. But if Anthony calls again, I want to be able to tell him that he won’t be arrested the minute he shows his face in Central New Jersey. Can I tell him that?”
“We’re looking to question him, that’s all,” Dutton said. “There’s no arrest warrant that I know about.”
“How about O’Donnell?”
“If he obtained a warrant, I’d see a copy, and I haven’t,” Dutton answered. “Nobody’s getting out the bright lights and the rubber hose just because your projectionist might want to surface one more time.”
“That’s good enough for now,” I said. “What have you guys and the county been doing about Ansella?”
Dutton’s face closed for business. “That’s an ongoing investigation. I’m not telling you about that.”
“Which leaves me to draw my own conclusions,” I told him.
“Is that a threat? I don’t like amateurs running around muddying the water in a murder investigation. I don’t like it when they interview witnesses and visit the widow of the victim on three separate occasions.” Dutton watched my face carefully as he said that.
“You knew about that?”
“You’re not sleeping with her, too, are you?” He’d seen Amy Ansella and he’d seen me. It wasn’t a ser
ious question.
“I’m not sleeping with anybody. I’m sleeping with her late husband’s video collection. It takes up most of my apartment.”
“Let me know if any copies of pirated movies show up.”
“Vincent had better taste than that. I haven’t found a really bad comedy in the bunch.”
Dutton stared at me a little more intensely, to make sure I wouldn’t dodge his comment again. “You let me know if any copies of pirated movies show up.”
“So I have to let you know everything I find out, and you won’t tell me anything?” I dodged.
“I’m sorry, which one of us has the badge?”
I stood up, took my plate to the dishwasher, and put it inside. “The one who wants one,” I said.
“Good. At least we have our roles straight.”
“I’m going to keep asking people questions, Chief,” I said as I walked to the front hall, where the front wheel of my bike was resting against a wall. “I don’t want you to think I’m sneaking around behind your back.” I picked up the wheel and walked toward the front door.
Dutton rumbled, but that might have just been the black cherry soda. “Just be a little bit quicker in reporting anything you might find out, okay, Elliot?”
I thought about that. “Okay,” I said. “I don’t think you’re trying to screw anybody who’s innocent. I’ll let you know.”
His face was solemn. “Thanks. The residents of Midland Heights will sleep more soundly tonight, knowing you’re out there protecting them from evil.”
“All in a day’s work.” I refrained from spitting (since there was no spittoon) or adjusting my ten-gallon hat (since I didn’t have one of those, either) before I walked out.
But when I got outside and started walking toward my bike, which leaned against Dutton’s garage door, I realized I had forgotten something very important. Not feeling completely comfortable with the situation, I went back and rang the doorbell. Dutton looked surprised when he opened the door and saw me there.
“Thanks for the sandwich,” I said.
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