Thinnes prodded the soggy package in the sink. White powder. Cocaine. Bingo!
“For the junk?”
Berringer didn’t answer. Thinnes cuffed him and holstered his own gun. Peering cautiously around the doorframe to see if it was safe to go out, he said, “You’re under arrest,” and pushed Berringer into the hall. He pocketed the .32 and picked up the sopping package. “You have the right to remain silent…”
Mop-up activities were in progress as Thinnes walked Berringer out to the squadrol. When he came back, Oster was happily directing an invading army of dicks and evidence technicians. Police photographers were recording the scene before the property people moved in to grab the unopened and with luck undamaged cases of kiddie porn and slasher flicks and S&M stuff rescued from the fires. Cartons of unburned invoices and office files promised to keep the state’s attorney’s people busy for years. Everyone was gloating like toy salesmen at Christmastime.
Thinnes took a private tour before the area commander did his dog and pony show for the press. Different parts of the building had been devoted to different aspects of skin-flick production. Much of the space had housed storage and packaging operations, but there were impressive darkrooms and editing rooms, and a desktop computer set up for the graphics. The highlight of the tour was a set with a silk-sheeted bed surrounded by lighting, sound, and camera equipment.
Ferris spotted Thinnes and pointed it out. “Place look familiar, Thinnes?”
“Go ahead, laugh, Ferris. I got the collar.”
Fifty-Two
The interview room at headquarters was small and plain, with hard chairs, an electric wall clock, and a view-through mirror. The simplicity was intended to eliminate distractions. Nothing was supposed to sidetrack suspects from the questions asked them. Oster had been staring at Berringer without saying a word for some time.
Berringer sat drenched with sweat, cuffed by one hand to the wall. “Look,” he said, “I’m not talkin’ until my lawyer gets here.” When Oster shrugged, he wavered. “What kind of deal could I get?”
“’Pends what you got. You know we’ll do the best we can if you’re helpful.”
“You’re not gonna believe it, but I don’t know.”
“Yeah, sure.”
“I don’t!”
“You got enough coke to buzz half the North Shore and you expect me to believe you don’t know where you got it?”
“I swear it! I’ll take a lie test!”
Oster let his disgust show plainly as he rose to leave.
“Wait! Hear me out!”
To Thinnes, watching the show through the one-way glass with Ferris, Viernes, Crowne, and Karsch, Berringer seemed as desperate as a man could be whose tale is hard to swallow and whose future depends on selling it.
“Ray, just for kicks, call the lab and ask them to compare the chromatograph of Berringer’s coke with the one from the stuff they found in Caleb’s apartment.”
Crowne shrugged but went. Thinnes stuck his head into the room. “Oster?”
“Just hang loose,” Oster told Berringer. He went out with Thinnes.
“Let him cool his heels for a minute,” Thinnes told him. “I got a hunch I’d like to check out. Might give us more leverage.”
The conference room was like the interview room, but without the mirror. Berringer had been conferring with his lawyer. He looked grim. The lawyer looked smug. “I’ve advised my client not to say anymore.”
Oster ignored the lawyer and spoke directly to Berringer. “The one we’re most interested in is the guy who gave you the coke.”
“We’re looking to get him on murder one,” Thinnes added. “You want to buy into that?”
Alarmed, the lawyer looked at Berringer. “You didn’t tell me—”
“He never said anything about murder!” Berringer blurted out. “I mean, the shrink didn’t die.”
Oster was surprised. Thinnes nodded.
“Don’t say another word!” the attorney demanded.
“That was your good luck, Berringer,” Thinnes said, “but as it happens, it wasn’t the first murder attempt.”
“The plan wasn’t to kill him!”
“Berringer, I cannot defend you if you won’t take my advice!”
This finally got through. “Yeah,” Berringer said. He told Thinnes, “I’m not sayin’ anymore.”
Thinnes shrugged. “Go ahead,” he told the attorney. “Advise him.” He walked out of the room. Oster followed, angrily. “Thinnes, what is this?”
“Murder, Oster. You got him cold on the porn charge and possession with intent to sell. Look, I don’t see that we got anything to lose here. He’s not going to talk about those, even without the legal advice. But he might want to talk himself out of a murder rap. If the state’s attorney’ll go along—”
“If, if, if. If you can even prove you got a murder. I talked to the ME’s office last week. They filed a termination report on Finley—as a suicide.”
“And I talked to narcotics. They want the supplier. So do I—for Finley’s murder!” He paused to run his fingers through his hair. “You gotta trust me on this.”
Oster thought about it a minute. “All right. Let me talk to narcotics and the state’s attorney and get back to you.”
“Here’s the deal,” Thinnes told Berringer and his lawyer. “The state’s attorney’s office is willing to reduce the drug charge to simple possession if you help us nail your supplier. You may also clear yourself of any collusion in this murder we’re investigating, and on the attempted murder charge we’re preparing.”
Berringer looked at his attorney, who nodded. “I don’t know who the guy is.” He looked from Thinnes to Oster. “Wait! Listen! The guy’s been blackmailing me for years, to keep him quiet about my operation.” Berringer looked at Thinnes. “Well, he never asked too much. It was like paying protection, and it was cheaper than moving the operation, which wouldn’ta got him off my back until the statute of limitations expired. So I paid.” He looked at his attorney, who was silent and disapproving. “Every once in a while, he’d let me off the hook for a payment if I did some custom photo work for him.”
Thinnes handed him one of the pornographic photos of himself. “Like this?”
Berringer glanced at it. “Yeah.” He looked again and realized who it featured. He turned white. “Jesus! You gonna press?”
“That depends on how cooperative you are.”
“Look, I’m sorry. I never knew who the guys were, or what he did with the pictures. I’d just get these phone calls with instructions—short calls, so I could never have ’em traced.”
“So what were the instructions this time?” Oster asked.
“He said he wanted some pictures of a married guy in bed with a broad. “Said ‘leave nothing to the imagination.’” Berringer looked nervously at Thinnes.
“Where’d you get the pictures of me, Berringer?”
Berringer shrugged. “The SOB told me where you lived and I staked it out. Standard surveillance stuff. I’m surprised you gotta ask.”
Thinnes scowled. “A rusty white Econoline with a December tag?”
“Yeah. How…?”
“You jacked it up and took a wheel off so no one would wonder why it was there so long.”
“Yeah, and some broad asked you directions when you were leavin’, so I got a couple a good angles.” Berringer seemed pleased with his own cleverness. Neither Thinnes nor Oster was impressed.
“Tell us about Dr. Caleb,” Oster said.
“He didn’t say to kill him!” They waited. “Guy said the shrink was a heavy user, into him for big bucks. Said he wouldn’t pay up. So he said we should ruin ’im—you know, set him up for felony possession. Guy in his position, that would put him outta business.”
Thinnes asked, “How was he supposed to get busted in the privacy of his own apartment?”
“I don’t know! I didn’t think about it too much. I guess I thought it would go down something like it did. I didn’t give the shri
nk enough to kill him. I swear! Just enough to keep him real happy till the cops arrived.”
“It didn’t occur to you that he might not be a user?”
“Are you kiddin’? He drives a Jag. All these rich assholes…If I’d had any idea I was being set up—I mean, why else would I do it? I don’t know this Caleb.” He looked earnestly at Oster. “And if I could finger this leech…Five years, he’s been bleedin’ me!”
Oster just waited.
“I should have followed instructions. I was supposed to leave all the coke with the shrink—make him look like a dealer—but I thought what the hell, who’d know?”
Fifty-Three
According to her license, Alicia Baynes was twenty-six. Right now she could have passed for forty. The dark roots showed in her blond hair; her makeup didn’t hide the lines and dark circles around her eyes. Thinnes guessed she hadn’t slept since the memorial service. Classic example, he’d bet, of a guilty conscience. Not necessarily guilty of murder but at least guilty of lying. She looked like she was about to cry again. She clasped her hands together on the table in front of her and looked all around the little District Nineteen interview room—everywhere but up at Thinnes, who was standing across the table from her.
He leaned back against the wall. He wanted to slap her and tell her to shape up. Instead he said, “You don’t get on very well with Miss Calder.”
“Not very.” Thinnes waited. “She’s one of those people who’s never wrong. It’s always me.”
“How’d she get on with Finley?”
Baynes smiled wryly. “When Allan first came, she was always trying to get something on him. Only he was such a perfectionist, she couldn’t. Then when Close started to take a liking to Allan, she started sucking up to him. She thinks we’re all too stupid to notice. It’s insulting.”
“So why do you put up with it?”
“I don’t know. When I first started, she was real nice—until she found out I was good. Then she started finding fault with everything I did.”
Thinnes wondered how much of the friction was due to race, how much to plain old insecurity.
“She do the same with Finley?”
Baynes gave him a wry smile, almost forgetting she was about to cry. “He was a man. Besides, there was no way she could compete with Allan. He had an M.B.A. from Northwestern. She used to try and act like they were equals, though. She just can’t stand not to be better than everyone else.”
Thinnes had met people like that. If one was your supervisor, the best you could do was keep a low profile and cover your ass. Baynes sounded truthful. And from what he’d seen of Calder, she probably was just insecure enough to resent competition, especially from subordinates.
Enough to kill Finley? He doubted it. That type didn’t have the nerve. The arrogance, maybe, but not the guts.
There was a tap on the door. Thinnes answered it, and Crowne entered with three plastic cups of coffee. He set them on the table in front of Thinnes and offered one to Baynes, sitting down opposite her. Sipping his coffee, he pulled out his notebook and pen and waited, looking expectantly at Baynes.
“I’d like you to give Detective Crowne your statement—about this job trade with Finley,” Thinnes said. “Then we’ll get it typed up and you can sign it and be on your way.”
She squirmed. “Why? What has it to do with Allan’s death, and why do I have to sign anything about it?”
“We don’t know that it has anything to do with Finley’s death, but it might. His showing up instead of you might be the reason someone killed him. As to why we want a statement from you…” Thinnes shrugged. “People forget things over time. Sometimes they lie. Sometimes they embroider. If we have a sworn statement, we’ve got the story on record. If you forget it all, we still have the story. If you lied, chances are you’ll forget the story you told us and we’ll catch you.” He paused to let that sink in. “And there’s no statute of limitations on murder. It might be years before we take this case to court. We want to be sure we don’t lose any details.”
Baynes nodded, then repeated what she’d told Thinnes at the wake—as he thought of the memorial service—that Allan had asked her to trade jobs. Finley hadn’t said why. She’d signed his name to the job she’d done, the one he was supposed to do; he’d signed his own name to her job, because he’d done it, and presumably it would never occur to him to cover anything up. That was all there was to it.
Thinnes was quite sure she was lying. He said, “That’s it?” and when she nodded, “Then if you’ll wait a few minutes longer, we’ll get this typed up for you to sign and you can go.” He nudged Crowne with his knee, and Crowne stood up. “Excuse us a minute,” Thinnes said.
When they were out in the hall, Crowne said, “Lying through her teeth.”
“I’m counting on her having a change of heart when it comes to actually signing. Once she sees it down in black and white.”
While Crowne typed the statement out Thinnes made a few calls for another case they were working on. They let Baynes wait almost half an hour. When Thinnes opened the door to the interview room, she jumped six inches in her chair, even though she was facing the door.
“Sorry to keep you waiting,” Thinnes said as he put the statement on the table. “If you’ll just read this over and sign it, we’ll be done.” Crowne closed the door.
She read it. And reread it. She picked up the pen Thinnes put in front of her and started to sign, then put it down. Staring at the paper, she told them, “I lied.”
Thinnes said, “Are you ready to tell us what really happened?”
She glanced up at him. Appraising his anger, Thinnes guessed. Then she took a deep breath and plunged in.
“Allan didn’t ask me to trade jobs. I asked him.” She waited for them to ask why; they didn’t. “I thought there was something wrong with the accounts I’d been doing, but I didn’t know what. I thought there might be money laundering going on. I just wasn’t…I wasn’t experienced enough to prove it from the records they gave me. I couldn’t make any accusations against the company without proof. And I couldn’t say anything to Bettina—she’d have gotten me fired. So I asked Allan to go for me. I knew he’d be able to tell—he was sort of a genius that way. He loved that sort of challenge. I never dreamed there’d be any danger—I mean, nobody kills accountants!”
That sounded more like it. “Why didn’t you tell us this in the first place?” Thinnes asked.
“I was afraid whoever killed Allan would come after me. And I was afraid Ms. Calder would fire me. I thought if I just put the reports through, they might be filed away. You know how sometimes people don’t really look at things, routine things?”
He knew. “So to save your own skin, you were willing to let someone get away with murdering your boyfriend.”
“I didn’t think…I was just afraid.”
Thinnes could feel Crowne’s contempt for her, and he tried to hide his own. “You willing to swear to this new version? You’re not going to change your story again?”
“No. I mean, yes, I’ll swear to it. And I won’t change it again.” She seemed relieved. She probably was. Confession and all that.
“All right. We’ll need the name of the company. And you’ll have to wait while we type up another statement.”
“And,” Crowne added, “we’d like to have you tell your suspicions to one of our detectives who specializes in money laundering.”
Thinnes managed to keep from gloating, but he couldn’t hide his excitement. Or his disappointment that the company Baynes named wasn’t Margolis Enterprises. Still, if they nailed Finley’s killer and maybe put the skids under some money laundering operation, it would be well worth their time.
Crowne managed to rain on his parade. “Thinnes, when was the last time we got the goods on a mob operation? And it’s got to be the organization—drug gangs are a whole lot messier.”
Fifty-Four
They hadn’t shuffled out from under the paper work on the Berringer case, so th
e office was busy. Crowne was reading with his feet up on the table; Viernes was typing; Swann was talking to Karsch outside the door of the latter’s office. Thinnes studied Finley’s checkbook as if reading it again would force some new clue to appear like invisible writing held over a flame. The plastic bag it came from, with its identifying evidence number, lay on the desk, along with a copy of Generally Accepted Accounting Practices. The latest edition of the CPA’s bible had been in the UPS package Finley’s landlord had signed for; Thinnes’d checked on that too. Finley’d bought it by phone from Kroch’s and Brentano’s with his credit card. No mystery there. Just keeping current.
The phone rang and Viernes answered it. “Thinnes,” he said. “Some guy from the VA for you. Name’s Fell. Line six.” He hung up when Thinnes answered. Viernes spotted Karsch going into his office. “Hey, Karsch. Got a minute?” Karsch nodded and ushered him in.
By the time Thinnes hung up, he was excited. He was about to tell Crowne about it when the phone rang again. Swann answered.
“Thinnes.”
Thinnes picked it up and listened for a while. “Twenty minutes,” he said. He hung up and turned to Crowne. “They got a warrant and they’re about to pick up Margolis. Wanna come?”
Crowne put his feet down and sat up. “I’d pay admission.” He grinned like a kid. “Everything happens at once, doesn’t it?” As they walked toward the stairs, he asked, “What did the VA come up with?”
“Seems our Dr. Caleb was a conscientious objector during the war,” Thinnes said. “Served as a medic. Cited for ‘unusual bravery and ingenuity in rescuing the wounded.’”
“So that makes him smart enough to kill Finley but damned unlikely.”
Thinnes looked back into the room. Swann was on the phone again, and Viernes was coming out of Karsch’s office.
“There’s more,” Thinnes told Crowne as they went out the door. “He got a Silver Star for taking out an enemy sniper who’d picked off two dozen men. Just charged the guy and blew him away.”
The Man Who Understood Cats Page 17