Silent City: A Claire Codella Mystery

by Carrie Smith

  No graduate degree from John Jay College of Criminal Justice was required to piece this mystery together. One hamster had died inconveniently, and it was now being replaced with a body double. Did the fact that Chambers was covering up an untimely hamster death mean she was also capable of covering up a murder? Codella watched her close the cage door and insert an orange carrot-shaped chew toy through the wire bars. She watched Chambers turn to the stiff little corpse, which had already lost the soft plumpness of living flesh. The exposed stomach looked lumpy and matted. “‘Farewell to thee!’” Chambers petted the little head. “But not farewell / To all my fondest thoughts of thee.” She looked at Codella and laughed nervously. “Anne Brontë. I read it at my great aunt’s funeral last month. I still have it memorized. John would have wanted me to say something like that.”

  Codella nodded politely.

  Then Chambers switched from contemplative to efficient, wrapping a section of the New York Times around the dead pet as if she were wrapping up salmon steaks at the Citarella seafood counter.

  “You left the school yesterday before Mr. Sanchez got there, is that correct, Mrs. Chambers?”

  “John was very upset after what had happened. He needed some medication.” She set the packaged corpse on top of a stainless push-pedal garbage bin.

  “What time did you leave?”

  “One thirty or so.”

  “Did you go back to the school later on to see Mr. Sanchez?”

  “No, but I called him.”

  “When was that?”

  “A little after two, I think.”

  “Tell me about that call.”

  “There’s nothing to tell. He didn’t take it. He was with Miguel Espina’s mother. Marva Thomas came on instead. I asked her how Miguel would be punished, and she told me he was getting an in-school suspension. I wasn’t pleased to hear that, and I told her Mr. Sanchez should at least have had the decency to get on the phone and tell me that to my face.”

  “And?”

  “She assured me she would have him call me right back. I waited thirty minutes, but he didn’t call, and then I was just so enraged that I called the district office.”

  “What time was that?”

  Chambers shrugged. “Two forty-five or so. It took me fifteen minutes to track down the superintendent’s number.”

  “Margery Barton?”

  “That’s right, and then I had to threaten to call the chancellor before the receptionist put me through.”

  Codella noted the times in her iPhone. “Tell me about your conversation with the superintendent.”

  “There’s nothing to tell about that either.” Chambers sniffed. “The B word applies. She’s dismissive and patronizing. She promised to look into the suspension, but I could tell it was all lip service and she wasn’t going to do anything.”

  “Is that why you posted your comment on the school message board?”

  Chambers looked surprised. “How do you know that?”

  “Sanchez was reading it the night he died.”

  Chambers blanched. “I shouldn’t have done it. It’s just that sometimes you feel like you’re screaming in the dark and you want someone to hear you. You know? It just wasn’t right for John to get his face pushed into a toilet bowl one day and have to face his tormentor at school the very next day. I still feel enraged when I think about what happened.”

  “How many parents of PS 777 go to that website?”

  “Plenty,” she said. “I started checking it in September. One of the parents posted the site on the office bulletin board.”

  Chambers didn’t strike Codella as the type of woman who sought vengeance through violence, but she had been surprised before. “Where were you on Monday night, Mrs. Chambers?” she asked.

  Chambers poked her finger through the wires of the hamster cage and watched the little body double nibble her fingers as she spoke. “I was here, with John and my husband. We were angry, Detective, but we’re not murderers.”

  Codella nodded. “Thank you for your time.”

  Chapter 30

  Haggerty sped toward the Park Slope section of Brooklyn so fast he got pulled over on Eastern Parkway right across from the Brooklyn Museum. The officer sauntered over from his squad car and asked the predictable question. “Do you know why I stopped you?”

  “Sixty-five in a forty-five zone.” Haggerty smiled and held out his shield for scrutiny. “Sorry, Officer. This is police business.” Then he raised his window and left the cop standing in the road.

  When he looped around Grand Army Plaza onto Prospect Park West, it was ten past twelve. He parked on the corner of Third Street and got out.

  Tall oak trees canopied the wide block. Most of the branches were bare, and dried-up brown leaves littered the street in front of the limestone row houses. He climbed the stoop of Ronald Davis’s address and read the names next to the buzzers. There were eight units in the once majestic single-family Victorian home. Davis was on the third floor. Haggerty rang him and waited for a voice, but the only answer was a long buzz unlocking the heavy parlor door. Haggerty pushed his way in, climbed the stairs, and knocked.

  The man at the door had dirty blond hair. His button-down shirt was neatly pressed, and his jeans looked clean and new. “Who are you?” he asked.

  Haggerty showed his shield. “I’m here about Hector Sanchez.”

  Davis nodded. “You wanna come in?” He scratched the side of his head. “I read about him this morning. I never knew a murder victim before.”

  The limestone’s living room had the original wood and tiling around the fireplace mantel. Someone had cared enough about the Victorian touches to restore the wainscoting and sand the hardwood floors to a gleaming polish. “Nice place,” Haggerty said. “A rental?”

  Davis nodded. “Sublet. Off Craigslist. Can you believe it?”

  Haggerty pointed to the acoustic guitar on the couch. “You play?”

  He nodded again.

  “What kind is it?”

  “Martin Dread. A vintage one made from extinct Brazilian rosewood. You play too?”

  Haggerty shook his head. “I took up the trumpet for two weeks in fifth grade. Old man couldn’t stand the racket. How well did you know Sanchez?”

  “I only worked for him five months.”

  “What did you think of him?”

  “Not much.”

  “Why’d he fire you?”

  Davis laughed. “Who said he fired me?”

  “If he didn’t fire you, then why’d you leave in September?”

  “Because I didn’t feel like working for a prick who gives teachers weekly report cards. How would you like to get an e-mail every Monday with your current grade and performance goals?”

  “That would depend on my grades, I guess.”

  “Well, I got C minuses. My buddy Chris got Cs. We used to laugh about it. Maybe other people were motivated by his little stunts, but he motivated me right out the door. Life’s too short to work for assholes. You know why he gave me the C minuses?”

  “Why?”

  “Because I wouldn’t stay after school an extra hour and a half three times a week—without extra pay, mind you—to prep kids for the state math tests. Would you work an extra shift for no pay?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “That’s my time. I run a business after school. I tutor private school kids at Berkeley Carroll and Packer and Poly Prep. Their parents pay me two hundred bucks an hour to teach their kids algebra, geometry, and calculus, and they’re grateful. Why should I give that up?”

  Haggerty did the calculations. If Davis had ten clients a week during the school year, he could make more than a grade-three detective just from tutoring. “I’m shitty at math,” he said. “Where were you on Monday night?”

  Davis laughed. “Why? You think I killed him? I guess you’re desperate for leads, huh?”

  Haggerty ignored the question. “Where were you?”

  “Tutoring Caroline Fenkel on Henry Street in Brooklyn Heights,” he said.
“She’s a junior at Packer.”

  “How long were you there?”

  “From six thirty to seven thirty, and then I met with Matthew Benjamin at the Starbucks on Montague. He’s a sophomore at the same school. I left him at eight forty-five.”

  “I’ll need their numbers.”

  “It’s not good for business if people think I’m part of a murder investigation.”

  “Not my problem. Just give me the numbers.”

  Five minutes later, Haggerty called the Fenkel and Benjamin numbers from his car and the alibi checked out, which meant he had just wasted two and a half hours trolling for nonexistent clues in the outer boroughs. He had nothing to take back to Claire.

  He started the car and headed for the Battery Tunnel.

  Chapter 31

  Eight officers sat around the table in briefing room 3-B at Manhattan North. Two were plainclothes homicide detectives from the North squad. Dan Fisk was a barrel-chested man of fifty or so—McGowan’s personal eyes and ears in the squad—and the few times Codella had spoken to him, he had been brusque, even cold. Frank Nichols was a beefy black man with short hair and a thin moustache. She had met him but never worked with him. The other six officers were uniformed personnel who’d been drafted to assist. All but one of them were men.

  McGowan had instructed her not to begin the briefing until he arrived, and as the minutes passed, Codella’s mouth was getting drier and drier. She pushed a piece of Biotene between her molars and clenched with the force of a car crusher. She had never led a task force at Manhattan North. In the two months she had been in the homicide squad before getting sick, she had been assigned to Joe Cleary’s team, and they had split their efforts between unsolved cases from previous years and one or two new homicides that were quickly solved. This would be her debut performance then, and McGowan would be evaluating everything she said. She was just like one of those PS 777 teachers, it occurred to her, who had dreaded the judgment of their impossible-to-please principal.

  When McGowan finally entered the room a little after 1:00 PM, she wasted no time. “You’ve all been selected to work on the Hector Sanchez murder investigation. First, let me give you a quick summary. Sanchez was the elementary school principal at PS 777. He was murdered yesterday evening in his apartment on West 112th Street. We don’t believe this was a burglary gone awry. There is no sign of forced entry, and nothing of value appears to have been taken from his apartment. His body was undressed and staged to look like Christ on the cross, and this may be related to the fact that he was described as the ‘Savior of PS 777’ in a magazine article last summer.”

  “How’d he die?” Fisk called out.

  Codella ignored his premature interruption. She didn’t intend to let him interview her in front of her task force. She kept her eyes on the uniformed officers, some of whom had probably never sat through a homicide briefing before, as she said, “We believe the victim opened the door to his killer. It’s therefore very possible he knew his killer. It could have been a neighbor. It could have been a teacher or parent or staff member at PS 777.”

  “We got that,” said McGowan. “How’d he die?”

  He and Fisk were tag teaming her, she realized. They were trying to throw her off her game, make her doubt her approach. She breathed deeply and took her time as she launched a photo from her iPhone onto the large flat-screen mounted on the wall behind her. “We believe the murderer came through the door, stepped behind Sanchez, and snapped his neck in one violent movement. The victim’s third vertebra was severed, and that would have paralyzed him from the neck down. He died within a half hour from heart failure. We can assume the killer is strong, that he’s tall enough to restrain a six-foot-two-inch victim. And he’s more than likely right handed. I say he deliberately. Chances are the perpetrator is male.”

  In her peripheral vision, McGowan reminded her of a patient sniper waiting for his clean shot. He stepped forward and fired. “Fisk, tell us what we need here.”

  Fisk pushed out his chair to stand. Codella raised her hand in a stop motion. “I’ll answer that,” she said. “This is my briefing. I’ll tell you what we need.”

  Silence followed. Fisk looked at McGowan. McGowan glared at Codella. Codella concentrated on the other faces around the table. She picked up a file folder. “This contains the names, addresses, and telephone numbers of the twenty-two teachers and eleven noninstructional personnel at PS 777. It also contains the contact information of every parent in the school the day Sanchez died. Everyone in this file needs to be contacted. We need to know where they were on Monday evening from 3:30 PM until the following morning. We need alibis verified. We have to identify names that require further investigation.” She looked at Fisk. “And I need you to coordinate this effort.”

  She slid the file across the table. “That’s it. We’ll have another briefing tomorrow morning. Let’s get to work.”

  Her hands were shaking as she shut off the flat-screen monitor, put on her jacket, and moved toward the exit. She held her breath as she passed McGowan in the doorway.

  Half an hour later, she found Marva Thomas sipping coffee and eating a sandwich at her desk. She skipped the usual greetings. “I spoke to Margery Barton this morning, and she told me she phoned the school on Monday at three PM to speak to Sanchez. You came on the line instead and told her he was busy.”

  Thomas dabbed her mouth with a napkin and finished swallowing. “That’s right.”

  “Who was he with?”

  Thomas folded the tinfoil around the uneaten half of her sandwich. “Christine Donohue.” She reached for her coffee.

  “Why didn’t you tell me this yesterday? When I asked you who was in this office on Monday afternoon, you never mentioned Christine Donohue.”

  “I guess I forgot. I’m sorry.”

  Codella planted her palms on her side of Thomas’s desk. She leaned within two feet of the assistant principal’s face. “This is a murder investigation, Ms. Thomas, or did you forget that, too? Your job is to give me every piece of information you can.”

  Thomas only nodded.

  Codella’s eyes flashed to the biblical passage on Thomas’s computer. “Why was Christine Donohue in his office?”

  “I assume they were discussing Mr. Bosco.”

  “Why would they do that?”

  “Because someone had to stand up for him, and Christine Donohue wasn’t afraid to do it.”

  Codella stepped back from the desk. “I understand Sanchez had a meeting here on Friday after school.”

  “Not here. They couldn’t meet here. The floors were being polished.”

  “Where then?”

  “The cafeteria.”

  “What was the meeting about?”

  “I don’t know. I wasn’t part of it.”

  “Who was there?”

  “Sofia Reyes. Dana Drew. Jane Martin.”

  “No one else?”

  “As far as I know. I left before they finished. It was five. I had to get home. My mother has Parkinson’s, Detective. She lives with me. She shuts down if she doesn’t have her medication at certain intervals.”

  “When was the last time you spoke to Sofia Reyes?”

  “Monday morning. She called to say she couldn’t be in on Tuesday and would reschedule her appointments for Thursday. She may be out of town. She would definitely call if she’d heard the news.”

  “Did you speak to Sanchez over the weekend?”

  “No.”

  “Did he have any other meetings on Monday that I should know about?”

  Thomas shook her head.

  “Where were you on Monday after school?”

  “I went straight home. I made some dinner. My mother and I watched television.”

  When Codella left Thomas’s office, she found Ragavan in the school cafeteria, and they walked back to the principal’s office together. “Have you found anything? Heard anything?”

  “He kept meticulous records on everybody in the school. Every teacher has a fol
der. He has detailed evaluations from his classroom visits. He has a report card with all their names and weekly grades. You gotta see this.”

  She stepped behind the desk and looked over his shoulder at the Excel document filled with comments and grades. Anna Masoutis had poorly modeled how to use key details in the text to find a main idea; Shirley Weaver had asked too many literal comprehension questions; and Roz Porter had conducted a lesson without scaffolding the beginning English learners in her class.

  “Jesus, I’d hate to work for him,” said Codella. “What about the voice mail messages? Did you listen to them?”

  “He hadn’t picked them up since last Friday. There are two from Sofia Reyes and one from the Apptitude guy. That’s it.”

  “Call the Apptitude guy. Find out what he was doing. I’ve gone to Sofia Reyes’s apartment twice already, and I left her a message to call me. We really need to speak to her.”

  Chapter 32

  Chip Dressler’s cell phone vibrated. He pulled it out of his pant pocket and recognized Margery’s number on the display, so he stepped out of the conference room on the twenty-fourth floor of McFlieger-Walsh where he was reviewing promotional collateral with the iAchieve marketing team. He walked quickly to his little office and closed the door. “What’s up?”

  “I’ve been trying to reach you for an hour.”

  “I’ve been in back-to-back meetings.”

  “Don’t you check your cell?”

  “I’m sorry.” He was careful not to let her hear his irritation. “What’s the matter?”

  “The police came to see me this morning.”

  “That was bound to happen.”

  “Yes, but the detective asked me where I was all Monday afternoon.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “Her. I told her I was in my office until five.”

  He wanted to say, What the hell did you do that for? Instead he said, “What was your thinking?”

  “I wasn’t thinking,” she snapped. “Obviously! It was stupid. Go ahead and say it.”