“Yes, we can. Two sets—Vincent Ciccolini and Abraham Lipnick.”
“No kidding.”
“Abe’s heart attack must’ve really thrown a wrench in the works. The .25 didn’t even get wiped down.”
Nodding in thought, Caine said, “It would be nice to know which one fired the shots.”
“It would,” Calleigh said, “but it’s way too late to check for gunshot residue on their hands. Of course, their clothes might tip us.”
“If we knew what each of them was wearing and assuming that they haven’t gotten rid of it.”
“Well, yeah,” Calleigh said. “But we have what looks like chauffeurs’ uniforms, confiscated from their homes. And if they were off their game enough to leave prints, maybe…?”
“Maybe. What about your Trenton friend—Irv Brady? Does he have enough evidence up there on the original crime to make an arrest, if we give him the gun?”
Her expression turned doubtful. “So much time has passed, the case would have to be mostly circumstantial. Irv’s got no concrete tie between them and the gun back then. It would be a heckuva coincidence, though, the boys just happenin’ to have that weapon now. I think a jury would side with the state…but the point may be moot. We’re gonna nail these vintage torpedoes on Lessor.”
That expression made him smile a little. “All right, Calleigh. Thanks. Did I mention you’re the best?”
“Not often enough.”
Caine picked up Detective Sevilla from her desk and went to the observation booth next to the interview room where Maria Ciccolini aka Chacon sat at the table, her pack of cigarettes and lighter in front of her as she puffed away. Glancing at the interview-room floor, he could see two squashed butts, meaning that in the brief time he’d left her here, she was already on her third smoke.
Maybe she wasn’t as calm, cool and collected as she wanted him to think. He studied her a short time longer, as he assembled his strategy in his thoughts.
Then he asked Sevilla, “You don’t mind me taking the lead on this?”
“Not at all.”
“Join me in there?”
Her eyes narrowed as she too studied their prime suspect. “I’m leaning against it,” she said, her eyes riveted. “I think Maria’ll try to manipulate you…just like she has every other man in her life. If I’m there, the mix’ll be wrong—she might feel hampered.”
“You’re saying she’ll come on to me?”
“Not exactly. But her sexuality, her femininity—that’s her favorite weapon, Horatio. She doesn’t use a gun or a knife.”
“She uses men,” Caine said, nodding. “Think I can make the songbird sing?”
Sevilla studied the woman for a long moment. “Truth?”
“Truth, Adele.”
“Probably not. I think she’s too smart.”
“But I have to give it my best shot.”
“You do. Try to trip her up, use her emotions against her. See if you can’t find a way to get her worked up, and maybe she’ll let something slip. Otherwise, I think it’s gonna be a real cold day in hell before she cops.”
“Or a real cold day in Miami, at least.”
“There’s a difference?”
They exchanged somber, fatalistic smiles.
When he walked into the interview room, Maria raised her eyes to him, flashed a smile, and shifted in her seat; her silk blouse opened a little more, which was perhaps her intent. She took a drag on her cigarette and let it out slowly through her nose.
Caine pulled up a chair. “And here I thought you only smoked when you were nervous.”
Gesturing with the cigarette, she said, “Maybe you make me nervous, Lieutenant.”
“I kinda doubt that, Maria. But I’m afraid there’s no smoking in here.”
“I noticed the lack of ashtrays,” she admitted, dropping the cigarette to the concrete floor and stubbing it out with the toe of her open-toed shoe. “Maybe you really will arrest me—for smoking…or littering?”
“If I arrest you,” he said, in a light, friendly tone, “it’ll have to do with your real name being Maria Ciccolini.”
She jerked up straight, her eyes flashing, her smile dropping. Unconsciously, she reached for the pack of cigarettes, but when she saw her hand moving, she stopped.
“You changed it, legally, recently,” Caine said. “But not before you signed your contract at the Conquistador.”
“Oh,” she said, disgusted, recovering quickly. “You got this from Daniel. He’s so afraid you’re going to get him on Tom’s murder, he’s throwing mud at anything that moves.”
“Revealing to us that your real name is Ciccolini—that’s mudslinging?”
“No, but…what’s the big deal? It’s no huge secret. If you’d asked me, I’da told you.”
“You might’ve thought to tell us. I’m sure you knew we’d questioned your uncle Vincent in the matter. He must’ve told you.”
She shrugged.
“Of course, he may not have had a chance to let you know that both he and his friend Tony have been arrested for the murder of Thomas Lessor. He used his one phone call to contact his lawyer. Or did the lawyer contact you?”
“No. First I’ve heard. But if you’ve arrested Uncle Vin, how am I a suspect?”
“We’ll get to that. No defense for your beloved uncle?”
“He doesn’t need one. It’s silly. Ridiculous. I don’t know what ever made you go in that direction. I mean, how can you possibly believe that two sweet old-timers like that—”
Caine pointed to the bruise by his mouth. “Your uncle Vin gave me this, earlier tonight, when he tried to flee from custody.”
She arched an amused eyebrow. “Fighting it out with the elderly, Lieutenant? And now you’re taking on a woman—coming up in the world.”
“Let me tell you how I can believe ‘two sweet old-timers’—and actually it was three—could have done this. It’s because of overwhelming physical evidence, from the murder gun to the machete they chopped your boyfriend up with.”
The reference to her boyfriend’s dismemberment didn’t cause a twinge.
“They left more evidence behind than they would have in their prime, back in Jersey. But they had a bump in the road—seems Abe Lipnick wasn’t as fit a senior as your uncle Vin. He had the bad manners to up and have a heart attack in the middle of the murder slash dismemberment…and wound up dying in the wee hours.”
She was frowning now. “Honestly, Lieutenant…I know my uncle had a reputation, back in New Jersey, for being some kind of mobster. But everybody with an Italian last name got stereotyped that way. Why do you think I changed my name?”
“To take advantage of another stereotype.”
“Well, it’s absurd. He was a retired businessman and so is Tony and so was Abe. Why in God’s name would they do such a thing to Tom?”
“Well, it wasn’t in God’s name, Maria…it was in yours.”
She tried to look shocked but it didn’t quite play. “My name? They did this for me? Why would they kill Tom for me?”
“That’s one of the things I was hoping you might clear up.”
She thought about that, his frankness throwing her off a little. Then she said, disingenuously, “I’m afraid I don’t follow you, Lieutenant—how in the world are you going to convict Uncle Vin and Tony of murder, if you don’t have a motive?”
He smiled and laughed a silent laugh. “I didn’t say I didn’t have a motive. Actually, I have two, either of which work just fine for me. Would you like to hear them?”
Any sense of playfulness, much less flirtatiousness, was gone now; her eyes were cold and yet they burned.
“Both motives begin with a phone call you received from Erica Hardy.”
She smirked, disgusted. “I told you before! I never knew her, and only learned about her from something I overheard. I wasn’t in love with him! He could chippie around all he wanted!”
“Maria, don’t embarrass yourself. We checked your phone records—Erica called
you the day before her death.”
“A wrong number.”
“A forty-five-minute wrong number?”
Her eyes narrowed. “Wait a minute. Let me think. I might have heard from Tom that night. Maybe he was using her phone. How would I know where he was calling me from?”
“With the pressure he was under, stepson undermining him, private eye dogging his tracks, I doubt he’d just hang around his girlfriend’s pad making phone calls. He certainly wouldn’t call mistress number two with mistress number one around. And he certainly wouldn’t risk putting your phone number on her phone bill. Can I continue?”
“Do what you want. It’s your show.”
But she was glancing at the cigarettes again; he’d struck a nerve.
“Well, stick with me,” he said. “This is where my performance gets a little complicated…and I hate it when I’m too hip for the room.”
Her glare said drop dead. At least.
“Let’s assume,” he said, “that the phone call was from Erica, and not from Tom using her phone. Somehow Erica found out about you—after all, you’d found out about her, not even trying—and she called you, and told you what was going on between her and Lessor. She was planning to confront Lessor about you—and she wanted you to leave her fella alone.”
“That’s a motive for her to kill Tom.”
“Well, she’s in the clear, Maria.” Caine couldn’t keep the archness out of his voice: “Tom had already killed her, prior to his own murder.”
“So she called me, and I was, what—jealous?”
“Yes. And had your uncle pop your faithless lover.”
She chuckled, shook her head. “You know better than that, Lieutenant.”
“I didn’t think you’d like that one. I don’t really like that one myself…but it fits the facts, so in fairness, I had to air it.”
“Fairness. You’d know about fairness?”
“I don’t think you get jealous, Maria—oh, you might have been jealous of Erica for being in the way of your career; she was a singer, too, doing well in Vegas. If you were going to take some action against that couple, Erica would have been your target.”
“Gee—where was I the night she got killed? Oh yeah, I remember—over half a continent away.”
“You didn’t kill Erica. The Vegas crime lab has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that Thomas Lessor was responsible for that brutal crime. And it was a brutal crime—a frightening crime.”
She gave in and lighted up another cigarette.
“Which is where theory number two comes in.”
She looked exasperated, smoke streaming from her mouth. “And what is behind door number two?”
Calmly, he said, “Erica Hardy called you when she found out about you and Tom…only instead of being jealous, you two career girls—both feeling a bit used by a man, for a change—decided to blackmail Lessor.”
“Blackmail Tom? You’re losing it, Lieutenant. You’re not too hip for the room. You’re a hick. And you’re flopping.”
“What a ripe blackmail target this guy was—he had money; he could build both of your careers.”
“Blackmail him how?”
“By threatening to go to his wife. That’s what he feared more than anything; that’s what he valued more than any…frolic with a lounge singer, here or in Vegas.”
She shifted in her chair. “This is stupid. Tom Lessor wouldn’t allow himself to be blackmailed.”
“Exactly. He didn’t want to play—he killed Erica, over it. And when you realized that he was heading your way, maybe coming after you, you got your uncle and his old Murder, Incorporated crew to add you to their client list. You knew they’d gotten back in the killing business. So you asked Uncle Vin for a favor. This is your opportunity to convince me otherwise, Maria. Show me that I’m wrong.”
She blew a long plume of smoke toward him. “Just start talking, you mean?…I think you should arrest me, first. Only—you don’t really have anything, do you?”
“We have so much on your uncle, I hardly know where to start. And as for you, the phone call from Erica—”
“Is all you have. Are you going to bust me? No? Yes? Well, if you are, you didn’t inform me of my rights before this little interview, did you? And you as much as told me I didn’t need a lawyer.”
“You can call one if you like.”
She took another long drag on the cigarette. “Why should I? I haven’t done anything wrong.”
Caine’s words came out slow. And cold. “Just because you didn’t pull the trigger, Maria, that doesn’t make you innocent of murder.”
“If I am innocent, you’re harassing me…”
“Maybe you should sue.”
“Then I guess I would need a lawyer,” she said, her voice now as cold as his. “And if I was guilty—if you had enough evidence to prove I’m guilty—you would have arrested me by now. In the meantime, I’m getting tired of this little cat-and-mouse nonsense, Lieutenant. Are you going to arrest me?”
He said nothing.
She shrugged. Sighed smoke. Rose. “Then I’m outa here.”
Seething, but not showing it, Caine watched the beautiful singer pack up her smokes and walk out of the room as if she owned the place. When the door closed, and he knew she was past the first turn in the hall, Caine pounded his fist on top of the table.
Sevilla strolled in, her expression a wry cocktail of amusement and disgust. “Didn’t that go well?” she said.
“There’s got to be something we missed.”
She sat next to him. Her voice was gentle. “You know, Horatio—sometimes we have to face it. Sometimes bad guys get away.”
“Not on my watch.”
“Well, this isn’t your watch. We’re on graveshift’s time, now. We need to go home. All of us.”
“I want everyone in the layout room.”
Sevilla’s eyes widened and then rolled. “You’re joshin’ me, right? Your kids are all about a hundred miles past exhausted. So are you. We’re at the far end of a double shift already. The overtime taxi cab’s meter is about to burst.”
“Help me round them up, will you?”
“…All right.”
Ten minutes later, a bleary-eyed Speedle was the last to stumble in. Alexx Woods was absent—the coroner had finally gone home to spend some time with her family. Looking around the room, Caine saw the truth in what Sevilla had told him: the exhaustion on his team was palpable; and he knew that they were giving two hundred percent on this one. Three hundred.
Delko’s eyes were bloodshot and his shoulders drooped, and Speedle—who frequently looked like the end of the day when he first came in—resembled a train wreck survivor who’d wandered away from the accident site. Even the perennially chipper Calleigh—who always seemed to have an extra cache of energy even Caine didn’t have access to—looked like a whipped pup.
For all their effort, all their time, somehow it still hadn’t been enough: the real killer was about to walk.
Caine said, “We’re missing something, people.”
They all groaned in unison.
“H, we’ve been all over this,” Speedle said, the class spokesman. “If Uncle Vin decides to take the wrap for his niece, we’re finished.”
“We’re not finished. We’ve just missed something.”
“H, how can you say that?” Delko asked.
“My gut says so,” Caine said.
“Well, that’s scientific,” Speedle said, eye-rolling.
“What do you want us to do?” Calleigh asked, worn out but always game.
“What I want you to do…is go home.”
They looked at him in astonishment.
“Go home. Get some rest. And most important—sleep in.”
A small spark of life snapped among them.
He raised a lecturing forefinger. “And if I see any of you here before nine—I swear I’ll dock your ass, a full day’s pay.”
They laughed. They all laughed. It was music to Caine’s ears.
“Tomorrow we start over with fresh eyes.” Their tired eyes were locked on him. “This evil woman will not walk away from this. From us. She set this up. We’re going to prove it. I’ll see you all tomorrow.”
12
Showstopper
AS MUCH AS HE hated budget meetings, Horatio Caine knew it was his fate to attend an ungodly number of them—that was the personal price he paid for having one of the premier crime labs in the United States. So, after spending the entire morning having his every decision questioned by the county’s accounting department, Caine greeted the lunch hour by grabbing some fast food and eating in the car, as he headed back to the office.
Maybe he was crazy—but he couldn’t wait to get back to work.
Caine had intended to swing right into checking in with his team to see how they’d done after a good night’s sleep; but out of habit he played his messages first, and found that an agitated Daniel Boyle had phoned this morning—no message other than, “Call me ASA-fucking-P, Lieutenant!”
Rather than get caught behind his desk, Caine made the call on the move, on his cell phone, as he headed for the ballistics lab to see what Calleigh had come up with.
The operator at the Conquistador transferred Caine to Boyle’s office.
“About fucking time!” Boyle said.
“And a pleasant good afternoon to you, too, Mr. Boyle. How may I be of help?”
“You can tell me just what the hell you said to Maria last night!”
As he walked down the hall, techs weaving around him, Caine smiled to himself, and said, disingenuously, “Nothing pertaining to you, in particular.”
“Yeah, right! And it’s my imagination that she came in here this morning yelling like a goddamn crazy woman and broke it off with me!”
“And that’s a bad thing?”
“You may find this difficult to believe, Lieutenant Caine, but Maria means…she means a lot to me.”
Caine didn’t bother to keep the amusement out of his voice. “Mr. Boyle—the last time we spoke about Maria Chacon—Ciccolini—you called her a ‘lying bitch’ and worse. Furthermore, you seemed delighted we were looking at her for your stepfather’s murder, and not you.”
“Well…I was hurt. Wounded by finding out she and Tom were lovers.”
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