Social Death: A Clyde Shaw Mystery

by Tatiana Boncompagni

  “We’re standing here back at the Haverford, the exclusive Manhattan building where Olivia Kravis, stepdaughter of media baron Charles S. Kravis, was found brutally murdered in her own home,” Alex began before jumping into the scoop about Rachel. A fast five minutes later, he wound up his report, and our team piled back into the van. Our work wasn’t over yet. We still needed to put together a package that could be aired that evening during Topical Tonight.

  While Alex and I worked on a script, Dino grabbed some fresh B-roll of the building and Jen finally made the pizza run. Once we had three minutes of television gold hashed out, I sprawled out on the last row of seats in the van and shut my eyes.

  “You got a date for the fundraiser?” Alex asked.

  “I’ve got someone,” I mumbled in reply. The fundraiser was truly the last thing on my mind.

  He sat up and peered at me over the seatback. “Who?”

  I opened my eyes. “Who are you taking?”

  “I asked first.”

  Aaron came to life in the front seat of the van. “If you’re taking Hardlick you’re making a massive mistake, bro.”

  Alex took a swig of water as he leaned his back against the van’s vinyl-coated seating, facing away from me. “You guys really don’t like her, do you?”

  “Forget what we think,” I said. “You can’t have a correspondent from a rival network sit at our company’s table. It would be totally inappropriate.”

  “Relax. I know I can’t bring Penny. I was going to ask if you wanted to come with me.”

  I bit my bottom lip. Did he really just ask me to be his date? Surely he didn’t think it was a good idea for us to turn up at a work function for our first outing together? He’d probably just thought it made sense for us to go together since we’d be working the case together all day before the event began. “Alex, I’m—”

  “Don’t worry,” he said, cutting me off. “I got a Plan B.”

  “Lucky girl, your Plan B,” Aaron quipped sarcastically from the front seat.

  I was about to tell our sound guy to go easy on Alex when my phone buzzed with a text from Panda. “I’ve got more for you,” was all that the message said. It was enough.

  I typed out a location for us to meet and put my phone back in my pocket. “I need to go meet a source,” I told Alex.

  “Want me to come with you?”

  He was trying to be helpful, but I couldn’t take him. I climbed out of the van to the sidewalk. “I need to handle this one alone.”

  Walking west to Central Park, I followed the path to the reflecting pond. Little kids stood around the edges, some operating remote-control boats, others watching and wishing their mom or dad would spring for a rental. Panda sat on a bench with a can of soda. “You should be at home,” he said by way of greeting.

  I sank down onto the bench next to him. “I know.”

  He gestured to my bag. “I see you got it back.”

  “Maldone’s assistant found it and had it sent over to Alex. Everything’s still there.” I stopped talking, remembering something. I pawed through my bag until I was sure I couldn’t find it: my birth certificate. “It’s gone.”

  “What’s gone?” Panda asked.

  I told him about how I’d found my birth certificate in Olivia’s office desk. “You sure you left it in there?”

  “Yes, I’m sure.”

  He scrubbed his forehead with the heel of his hand. “Why didn’t you tell me about this before?”

  “I didn’t think it was important.”

  “I ran a search for crimes involving Ketamine in the last twelve months. Almost all of the cases were your standard date-rape scenarios.”

  “Any of the perps work for GSBC?” I asked, elbowing him playfully.

  “This is serious, Shaw.”

  He didn’t have to tell me that. “You heard about Michael Rockwell’s date-rape past?”

  “Never proven, but yeah.”

  “You said you had more for me.”

  He pulled open his khaki parka to reveal a blue tie printed with stalks of corn. “First you must guess correctly.”

  “Neal, I don’t think I have enough brain power today.”

  “C’mon. It’s an easy one.” He took a sip of his soda.

  I gave it another look and shook my head.

  He pulled on an earlobe. “All ears.”

  “I should’ve gotten that.”

  “I’ll give you a pass today, kid.” He patted my back.

  “That’s generous of you,” I said, teasing.

  He chuckled. “What does Globe-Trotter mean to you?”

  “The suitcase brand?” They were fashionable and expensive. They were also built like the old steamer trunks, with roomy insides and hard exteriors made from fiberboard and leather. I only knew all that because Olivia had them. “Rachel?”

  “The killer stuffed her body inside one, and then hid it in the storage space. Probably used the elevator to get it down to the basement and everything.”

  “Can I take this to air?”

  He nodded. “You didn’t hear it from me. Body was wrapped in a garbage bag then locked inside a suitcase”

  We sat there in silence, both gazing out over the pond. Finally, I turned to Panda. “So what’s the latest theory?”

  “It looked like a lovers’ quarrel—neighbors’ account of two women yelling in the residence, no forced entry, and a murder weapon indicating an unplanned crime. But now we got another body and some semen, which suggests a wholly different scenario. Maybe a three-way, or maybe Rachel was doing a guy behind Olivia’s back.”

  “Andrey Kaminski. He had access.”

  Panda bobbed his head. “But no motive.”

  I gnawed on that for a second. What could Andrey’s motive be? Money? Sex? Killing Rachel and Olivia wouldn’t give him more of either. “The only person I can think of who has one is Michael Rockwell. But why would Rachel sleep with him if they were divorcing?”

  The mention of Michael’s name jogged Panda’s memory. “By the way, I asked about his alibi. Rockwell said he was on a train back to Connecticut.”

  “Was he?”

  “He bought the ticket. No way to know if he was actually on the train.”

  “He couldn’t name a witness?”

  “Not a one.”

  “Is he a suspect?”

  “Ask me that tomorrow. In the meantime, keep your distance from him. Send someone else to ask the questions this time.”

  This was why Panda wanted to see me. The Globe-Trotter tip was just the bait. He could have told me earlier, or over the phone, but he’d held on to that little nugget to lure me to the park in person, so he could make sure I’d gotten the message about Rockwell.

  He drained the rest of his Sprite. “I mean it, Shaw. Stay away.”

  I left Panda in the park and returned to the Haverford, where our satellite truck had been joined by vans from every other major network, plus crews from the syndicated entertainment-news shows, Extra, Inside Edition, and TMZ. I even spotted a few reporters from the Times of London and the International Herald Tribune milling around the police barricade.

  I wanted to stay to make sure everything went off as planned, but I was exhausted. I’d hit a wall and felt like I was going to collapse if I didn’t get home soon. I passed on to the crew what Panda had told me about Rachel’s body being stuffed into a suitcase, and put in another two calls to the bureau. One to Sabine, to ask her to find pictures of Globe-Trotter suitcases we could use on air; and one to Barton Oberlink, one of Topical Tonight’s guest bookers, to ask him to try to get hold of the Harts to book them for that night’s broadcast. Then I walked over to Lexington and called a 24-hour locksmith to come meet me at my apartment. It was one of those bright, brisk fall afternoons—nearly cloudless sky, golden sun, and the smell of sidewalk vendors roasting chestnuts in the air—that made living in a city like New York a real joy. But all I could think about was my bed, fresh sheets, and the shades drawn. I hailed a cab for home.r />
  Click, click.

  I heard a key scraping in the lock, the doorknob rattle.

  “I had the locks changed,” I yelled from my bed, bolting up from my bed. “And I’m calling the police.”

  I felt for my phone and dialed 911 as panic sluiced through my veins. The clock on my dresser read ten p.m. I’d been asleep for almost six hours. Not long enough, not by a long shot, but I had more immediate concerns at hand.

  “Someone’s trying to break into my house,” I said into the phone. “My name is Clyde Shaw and I’ve been covering the Olivia Kravis murder investigation. Please send someone quick. Find Detective John Ehlers.” I gave my address and stayed on the line as I felt for the knife at the back of my nightstand.

  A few years earlier, I’d produced a segment about a woman who had successfully fought off a rapist who’d attacked her in bed. The perp had already raped and killed three other women in her Indianapolis neighborhood and he would have done the same to her if she hadn’t been able to arm herself quickly. She stabbed him three times, twice in the shoulder and once in the neck, killing him almost instantly. Three days after my report aired, the knife arrived via FedEx with a note from my dad. Just in case, it read.

  I sat down on the edge of my bed, knife in hand, and waited. Five minutes later, I heard pounding on my front door. “Police,” yelled a male voice from the other side. I slipped on a robe and looked through the peephole to confirm that it was indeed a pair of uniformed officers before I let them in. “Did you see anyone out there?” I asked.

  The tall one looked at the blade in my trembling hand. “You mind putting that down, Ma’am?”

  I put the knife down on the tiny table in my entryway and began to explain what had happened. The shorter officer unclipped his handheld transceiver from his belt. “I’ll check the perimeter.” He let himself out the front door as the tall officer told me to take a seat. “You sure you heard someone?”

  I rubbed my temples, mentally spent. Had I dreamt it? Was this yet another hallucination? I didn’t think so, but I couldn’t be sure.

  There was another knock on the door as Ehlers popped his head around the doorframe. “We seem to be making a habit of this,” he said to me, not unkindly.

  I smiled, relieved that I’d gotten him instead of Restivo.

  He took out his pen and notebook. “From the top, Miss Shaw.”

  I repeated my story. Ehlers wrote everything down and told me they’d be keeping a unit outside my apartment building that night in case the perp came back. “I’m glad you changed the locks,” he said, closing his notebook.

  I cinched my robe closed and studied him. “You look beat,” I told him. “You ever get any time off?”

  “Probably as much as you do,” he replied, showing himself to the front door. “Call me if anything else happens.”

  After the two patrolmen left, I bolted my door and went back to bed only to find that I was completely wired. I peeked outside my window and saw the squad car parked just outside, watching the front door to my building, but I still felt freaked-out. A pot of chamomile tea didn’t do much to calm my nerves, so I gave in to temptation and started checking the messages on my cell. There were forty. Most of them came from Georgia, Alex, and Jen. While I was asleep, the medical examiner had released Olivia’s preliminary autopsy—it wouldn’t be complete until the toxicology reports came in, and those would take at least another two weeks—and the ME had granted his first interview to GSBC, confirming Olivia’s manner of death as homicide and cause of death as bludgeoning. “Whore-on-my-dick managed to level another shocker,” Jen said on the voicemail she’d left me. “Rachel Rockwell was pregnant.”

  I fired up my desktop computer. There was already a smattering of articles online about Rachel’s pregnancy. Many speculated on how far along she was, who the father was, and whether this mystery man was also the killer. ABC News had an online piece referencing a study that said murder accounted for 20 percent of deaths among pregnant women. Almost every article linked to the video of Whorelick interviewing the medical examiner. He had confirmed that Rachel was with child at her time of death and refused to make any further comments on her case. I kicked the wall in frustration. We’d gotten creamed.

  But worse than that, Rachel’s autopsy—the semen, her pregnancy—threw doubt on what Andrey Kaminski had told me. He’d claimed it had been over between them for a long time, but now that it was apparent that Rachel had indeed been sleeping with a man while she was dating Olivia, I no longer bought it. It was possible that Rachel and Michael had slept together in the midst of their divorce battle—that sort of thing sometimes happened—or that Rachel had a more active and varied sex life than any of us realized, but Andrey as the father seemed like the most plausible explanation. Could their rekindled affair be the reason Olivia and Rachel had been arguing that night?

  I picked up my phone and dialed Kaminski. “You have a whole lot of explaining to do,” I said into the receiver.

  “I’m at work.”

  That was a surprise. “They haven’t fired you yet?”

  “No.”

  “I take it you’ve seen the news.”

  He sighed. “We should probably talk in person. I got tomorrow night off.”

  “Saturday night?” I couldn’t help myself. I pictured Andrey at my stove, his shirtsleeves rolled up to reveal that tattoo. Hell, his shirt off. A bottle of red open on the table. Dave Matthews on the stereo. There were worse ways to spend an evening—if I hadn’t also suspected him of impregnating a murder victim. “Tell me something: Did you get Rachel pregnant? The baby’s obviously not Olivia’s. And I’m guessing it’s not Michael’s, either.”

  “I can’t talk about that now.”

  His deep voice rolled over me, awakening something it shouldn’t. What was it about this guy? Why was I so damn attracted to him? “Fine. Tomorrow. When and where?”

  “Seven.” He named a pub on First Avenue. Then there was silence. He’d hung up on me.

  The bastard stood me up. Saturday at seven, he was nowhere to be seen and not answering his cell. I was two cranberry-and-seltzers in by the time I gave up, walked home and nuked a frozen Marie Callander’s for dinner. I went to sleep pissed as hell, and woke up even angrier. I went swimming at a pool near my apartment and ate a Belgian waffle smothered in maple syrup and butter for brunch. By Sunday mid-afternoon, I was ready to get back in the game. Georgia had barred me from the FirstNews building but she couldn’t stop me from getting back to work.

  First thing I did was work up a new timeline. Rachel and Olivia came back to the Haverford around ten p.m. The neighbors heard them arguing shortly thereafter. Olivia probably retreated to her office, Rachel the bedroom or living room. That’s when the killer made his move, and my guess is he went for Rachel first. Olivia’s death was messy and quick whereas Rachel’s killing seemed more methodical and clean, almost clinical. The killer had also taken the time to wrap Rachel’s body in a garbage bag, which I knew could be significant because of a case we’d covered about five years ago.

  A young Denver mom’s remains were found in a nature preserve fifteen miles away from their two-story Tudor. The killer turned out to be her husband, who had been having an affair with a twenty-two-year-old he’d met while taking his kids out for hot-fudge sundaes at a local ice-cream shop. He’d slit his wife’s throat, sawed her body into pieces in their toddler’s bathroom, bagged her body (minus the head, which he tossed into the Arkansas, according to a later confession), and buried the whole thing six feet underground. We’d had a forensic psychologist on the show say the use of garbage bags was telling, because it meant that the killer wanted to literally dispose of his wife.

  Assuming Rachel had been attacked first, the killer had to incapacitate Rachel—tie her up, knock her over the head, maybe suffocate her—before going after Olivia, because it would have been too risky to spring on Olivia with someone else moving around in the apartment. That was my theory, anyway. Killer was there when the wom
en got back at ten. He waited for them to separate, then went to work. No cleanup for Olivia but Rachel was carted off to the basement and locked away in Olivia’s storage space so it would look like she was the murderer. That would at least buy him a few days to get his story straight. Olivia had been killed for loving Rachel, but Rachel was the killer’s real prize.

  There was only one problem with this theory. It didn’t explain why Olivia had texted me that night that she needed to tell me something. It’s time you know the truth. The truth about Rachel? Or about something else?

  I called up the schedule that Olivia’s assistant, Emma, had emailed over to me, and looked again for anything out of the ordinary. There was nothing, but then again if Olivia was doing something she didn’t want others to know about, it wouldn’t be on her official schedule. I started looking for big holes in her calendar. There were maybe a dozen total, but few were recent. In August and the first two weeks of September, it looked like she left the office every Tuesday and Thursday at three, and didn’t come back until the next day. October she was back into work mode, with the exception of one Friday, which was just a holiday—a trip to a spa in the Berkshires, if memory served me correctly. Then, the week she was killed, she was also out of the office without explanation on a Wednesday. I flagged all these dates and times and sent an email to Emma asking her to try to remember what Olivia might have said she was doing on those days.

  Though it was a Sunday, she called me back in less than an hour. “The Tuesdays and Thursdays in August were spent at her father’s place. She was helping Charles’s ghostwriter go through some of his old boxes of memorabilia for pictures and handwritten letters they could print alongside text in his memoir.”

  “And the days in October?”

  “That Friday was a vacation day. The Wednesday she said she had a meeting, but she didn’t tell me who she met with or where she was going.”

  “Was that unusual?”

  “I assumed it was a doctor visit.”

  “Why? Was she going to the doctor frequently?”