Silent City: A Claire Codella Mystery

by Carrie Smith

  Chapter 66

  “You’re not telling me everything, Dressler. You want me to think you’re the innocent one in all this, but how can I do that when you’re sitting there lying to me?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean Sofia Reyes. What else do you think I mean?”

  “Isn’t it obvious what happened?”

  “Pretend I’m an idiot.” Haggerty tapped the tip of his index finger into the table so hard the bone felt bruised. “You’ve got one shot at the truth. Don’t dick me around. Either make me believe you or this interview is over and I process the fuck out of you.” He stared into Dressler’s green eyes. He could almost hear the calculation behind those green eyes. What does he already know? Does he know about the Skype call? Does he know Reyes saw us? What did Jancek already tell them?

  Finally Dressler said, “Sofia Reyes was Skyping with Sanchez when we knocked on his door. We walked in and there she was. She saw us there.”

  “She could have tied you to the murder.”

  “She couldn’t tie me to something I didn’t do. I didn’t kill Sanchez, and I didn’t kill her. She was his problem. Isn’t it obvious what happened? He went to her apartment and killed her.”

  “And you didn’t think to tell me that until this moment?”

  “I told you. I was afraid. I have a lot to lose.”

  Haggerty lighted a cigarette and blew a stream of smoke across the table. “You’d have a lot less to lose if you’d left Sanchez’s apartment Monday night and come straight to the police.”

  “I realize that now,” he said quietly.

  Haggerty leaned his elbows on the table as if he were having a casual conversation at a bar. “You’re full of bullshit, Dressler.” He blew more smoke in his face. “And the smell is getting to me.”

  “I’ve told you the truth.”

  “Then why the fuck were you in Dana Drew’s apartment tonight looking for Jane Martin?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “Then you better get started.”

  “Jancek made me go.”

  “He made you?”

  “He had a gun,” said Dressler. “He asked to meet me and talk, so I met him in the Time Warner building, and he was all nervous about those surveillance tapes on the news. He told me he’d seen Jane Martin in that laundromat on his way from Sanchez’s apartment. He was afraid she’d seen him too. He shoved the gun in my back and said I was coming with him and not to try anything or he would shoot me and then shoot himself, and after what he did in Sanchez’s apartment, I didn’t doubt he was capable of something like that, so we got in a taxi and he took me to Dana Drew’s apartment. I didn’t even know it was her apartment until we got upstairs.

  “We got up there and Martin wasn’t even there. It was just the babysitter and the kid. Jesus! What a fucking mess. Come to find out Martin wasn’t even living there. Jancek panicked at that point. He forced them into the bedroom. He made me tie them up.”

  “Then what?”

  “We waited for Drew to get home. He made me tie her up, too. And then he used her phone to text Martin and Codella. He was going to round them up and kill them all. Don’t you see that? He was crazy.”

  “But you had a gun, too.”

  “He gave it to me, but I wasn’t going to use it. He wanted me to slit their throats the way he slit Sofia Reyes’s, only I refused. I’m not a murderer. I got my own kid. I love kids. I’m not going to kill a kid or a mother of a kid. That’s not who I am. I go to church. I’m the deacon of a church. I count the money every Sunday. I’ve got a conscience. You’re not looking at a killer. Chip Dressler is no killer. I told him I couldn’t do that, he’d have to kill me too. So he said he would do it, and I played along. I said I’d guard him, but I never intended to use the gun. I was going to make him stop. I was planning to save them all. I knew I had to shoot him, but I’d never held a gun before. I’ve never shot a man in cold blood. I didn’t mean to hit the detective on the head. I meant to hit Jancek. Please, I’m telling you the truth here. You’ve got to believe me. Please don’t ruin my life.”

  Haggerty wasn’t listening to Dressler’s sales pitch anymore. He was listening to Dressler’s voice in his head. He wanted me to slit their throats the way he slit Sofia Reyes’s.

  Chapter 67

  The story poured out of him now like milk from a pitcher.

  “He phoned me two, three times a day after that—to remind me to keep my mouth shut, as if I needed his reminders—and then those surveillance photos were released yesterday, and he went crazy. He wanted me to meet him and talk. We met outside the Time Warner building at nine o’clock last night. I was still in the city because I took Marva to dinner. I had walked her home earlier, and I was sitting in a bar just thinking about her. I met him, and all he could think about was the woman in the laundromat who the police were looking for. Had I seen her? Did I know who she was? And I did know who she was. I knew her from last Friday when I was polishing the floors and she and Dana Drew were meeting with Sanchez and Reyes in the cafeteria. I told him, and I wish I hadn’t, because when I did, he said we had to go and see her. We had to find out if she recognized us.

  “‘Are you crazy?’ I said. ‘That’s not a good idea. We should stay as far away as we can. Maybe she saw nothing. The photos are blurry. The photos can’t prove anything.’ But he didn’t want to take a chance. He didn’t want anybody out there who could tie him to Sanchez. I said I wasn’t going to go there with him. I wanted no part of it, and that’s when he shoved the gun in my side. ‘We’re both in this,’ he said. ‘We’re both in this mess because of you. And we’re going to finish it together.’”

  “What did you do?”

  Jancek shrugged. “I got in the taxi with him. What else was I supposed to do? He had a gun in my ribs.”

  “What was the plan?”

  “He said Drew would be at the theater. The kid would be asleep. We’d get past the doorman, use the fire stairs, and take care of Martin.”

  “Kill her?”

  “So no one could tie us to the murder.”

  “And what happened?”

  “We got past the doorman, but things went wrong upstairs. Martin wasn’t there. A babysitter opened the door. She saw Dressler’s gun and panicked. We had to barge in so she wouldn’t scream or call for help. I had to restrain her so she wouldn’t go to the phone or wake the kid. I didn’t hurt her though. I just held my hand over her mouth while Dressler found some twine and tape in a kitchen drawer. We tied her up. She told us Martin didn’t live there. She was crying. I taped her mouth. It was terrible. I told him we should never have come there, and he said, ‘Shut up. Shut the fuck up and do what I say,’ and he tossed me his pocketknife. He had planned for this, you see. ‘You’re going to wait for a full house,’ he said, ‘and then you’re going to slit their throats.’”

  Chapter 68

  “How do you know Jancek slit Sofia Reyes’s throat?”

  “What?”

  Haggerty tapped his fingers on the table in the small interview room. “A minute ago you said Jancek wanted you to slit their throats the way he slit Sofia Reyes’s. Those were your words. How do you know he slit her throat?”

  “He told me.”

  “When? When did he tell you?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t remember.”

  “If somebody told me he’d slit a person’s throat, I think I’d remember when. That’s not the kind of thing you forget. When did you talk to him?”

  “He called me.”

  “When did he call you?”

  “The next day,” said Dressler. “Tuesday.”

  “What time?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “What else did he tell you?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Oh, come on. He tells you he slit her throat, but he doesn’t tell you anything else?”

  “He said she bled a lot. That’s all. I told him I didn’t want to know.”

  “Where were yo
u when he called you?”

  “At my office, I think.”

  “You think?”

  “Look, a lot has happened this week. It’s all a big jumble in my head. What do you want from me?”

  Haggerty smiled. He oozed sympathy. He said, “Sorry. You want another bottle of water?”

  “No. I want to get out of here. I’ve been cooperative.”

  “We’re almost done. Just a few more questions. So Jancek called your cell phone, right?”

  “Right. I told you.”

  “And he said he’d slit Sofia Reyes’s throat and she had bled a lot.”

  “Right.”

  “But he didn’t say anything else?”

  “No.”

  “He didn’t tell you the cut was so deep that she never had a chance and she couldn’t even raise her hands to try because they were bound so tight?”

  “He’s a crazy motherfucker.”

  “And this was sometime on Tuesday?”

  “Or Wednesday. I don’t know. What’s the big deal?”

  Haggerty leaned across the table slowly. “The big deal, Mr. Dressler, is that no one except the police and the killer know how she died.”

  “Jancek knows.”

  “Does he? Does he really?”

  Dressler struggled to keep his face composed, but his tongue wetted his lips, and his teeth bit his lower gum. His nostrils flared on each intake of breath.

  “We’ll check your cell records, Mr. Dressler. If there’s not a call from Jancek, we’re going to charge you with the murder of Sofia Reyes. I think this interview is over.”

  Monday

  Chapter 69

  Karen Babb didn’t try to stop her from entering the inner sanctum of the district office unannounced. Codella went straight to Margery Barton’s office and pushed open the door. Barton was on the phone. “I’ll call you back,” she said quickly and hung up.

  “I assume you’ve heard about the arrests,” said Codella.

  “It’s all anyone is talking about today,” she said. “I can’t believe something like this really happened.”

  Codella almost laughed. She wanted to say, Don’t you mean you can’t believe that the man you’ve been fucking for a year at the Mandarin Oriental was a murderer? But she refrained. It was satisfaction enough to know that Barton must be thinking it. “Well, it did happen.”

  “So Chip—Chip Dressler—confessed?”

  Codella detected hopefulness in her voice. “If you’re asking will you dodge a turn in the witness box under oath, then the answer is yes. Your dirty little secrets are safe for now, Dr. Barton, though I expect your iAchieve sale isn’t.”

  Barton’s face relaxed visibly. “I don’t know about that,” she said with a burst of confidence. “McFlieger-Walsh did nothing wrong.”

  “Except send a murderer to broker a deal with the biggest school district in the country.”

  “I spoke to their publisher this morning. John McGreevy. He’s offered to equip every school in the district with handheld devices for free, a gesture of goodwill to keep the sale on the table. So actually, the district has every reason to pursue the adoption.” She smiled.

  Codella felt her outrage surge like a spiking fever. She loathed Margery Barton. She had loathed her, she realized, from the moment they had met. She hated her brittle femininity and her smug condescension. She was the sort of woman who capitalized on every opportunity regardless of the wreck she left in her wake. She offended Codella’s sense of honor as deeply as her own father had offended her. “You may well get your program, Dr. Barton,” she said slowly, “and you may get to keep your less than ethical infidelity under everyone else’s radar, but I will always know the truth about you. And I’ll always know—even if no one else does—that you had a hand in this crime.”

  “That’s a preposterous allegation.”

  “Is it?” She stared into Barton’s eyes. “You were played, Dr. Barton, and you know exactly what I mean.”

  Barton dabbed her lower lip with one manicured forefinger. At least she had the good sense not to protest further.

  Codella continued to stare until Barton looked away uncomfortably. “You surrendered your judgment in that hotel bedroom, and when Chip Dressler called you Monday night asking for Sofia Reyes’s address, you gave it to him. You made a murder possible when you took that call and failed to question him, when you failed to say that it was not your place to give out that information.”

  Now Barton’s face became an open canvas of panic.

  “But you already know all of this. You’ve known it since Sofia turned up dead. You started to figure it out sometime late Wednesday or Thursday morning, I’m sure, after we left your office and you saw the news reports of Sofia’s death. You thought back on Monday and how he had called in his ask-me-no-questions request. You knew then that you were in far deeper than any Roberto Cavalli scarf alibi could dig you out of. You are, after all and despite your poor judgment, an intelligent woman. So what do you have to say for yourself?”

  Barton stood erect, struggling to maintain her now porous posture of imperviousness. “I’m not going to say anything,” she said evenly.

  “I didn’t think so.” Codella turned to go.

  When she double-parked her car in front of the school, Marva Thomas was greeting the children of PS 777 on the steps of the building. As soon as the school bell rang, Codella got out and approached the slender, tired-looking woman. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “What for?” Thomas shrugged. “You just did your job.”

  “At least the school can move on now. Its tyrant is gone. You’re all free to shape a new future.”

  Thomas smiled. “It’s a nice thought. But I don’t have any illusions when it comes to shaping the future.”

  “No, I suppose I don’t either.” Codella thought about her own situation. McGowan certainly wouldn’t be able to complain about her handling of this case, but he wouldn’t be happy with the national publicity she was getting and would continue to get, given that one of the murder victims was Dana Drew. And her male colleagues at Manhattan North weren’t going to make her life easy. But what guarantees did she have that she would even be around to worry about that? Were you really free to shape your future when the next cancer cell might proliferate inside you at any moment? What had Dr. Abrams said at her last exam? “Don’t come back for six months.” She would be living her life in six-month increments for the foreseeable future. What long-range plans could you make in six-month spans?

  “I’m the official principal of PS 777 now.” Thomas changed the subject. “Margery Barton had a miraculous change of heart about me. One day I’m not up to the task, and the next, I have her full confidence.”

  “Yes. I heard. Congratulations. At least she put something right.”

  “Ironically I’m not going to make big changes. Sanchez was doing many of the right things—raising the quality of teaching, supporting parents and students. He was just doing them in the wrong way and for the wrong reasons. He let things go to his head.”

  “I wish you the best, Ms. Thomas.” Codella began to step away, but then she turned back. “And for what it’s worth, I’m sorry about Milosz Jancek. I do believe he cared about you. In his own deluded way, he did want to protect you.”

  Thomas looked down at the school steps. “I don’t want to think about him, Detective. But I appreciate your efforts to console me.” And then she went into the building.

  Codella drove back to the 171st one last time to thank the team that had helped her. She spoke to Muñoz first, in a loud voice that Blackstone could hear. “You did a good job on this,” she told him firmly. “You can have my back any day, Detective.”

  Portino gave her a fatherly hug. Reilly said, “Don’t be a stranger.”

  Then there was just Haggerty. He was sitting at his desk in the corner of the detectives’ squad room as she put on her leather jacket to head back to Manhattan North. They traded a glance, and then she turned away and walked out kno
wing he would follow. They met on the sidewalk in front of the precinct. “So it’s over,” he said, “and you’re as good as you ever were. You’re still the genius.”

  Codella shook her head. She hadn’t been that good, she knew, in so many ways, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to resume being who she had been before anyway. The one upside of cancer, it occurred to her, was that it tore you right down to your foundations. If you survived it, you got to rebuild from the ground up, to totally new specifications. From now on, she would follow her instincts, and right now her instincts told her not to close the door on Haggerty. She smiled at him. “You want to get some of that vegan chili with me later?”

  He smiled back. “Oh God. You’re going to punish me forever.”

  “Eight o’clock.” She turned and got into her car.

  Acknowledgments

  To those who have helped me along the way, I am profoundly grateful.

  Cynthia Swain, Cameron Swain, and Matthew Swain, for always dreaming with me

  Kathy Green, my agent

  Matthew Martz, my editor

  S. J. Rozan, a gifted writer and my insightful teacher

  Constance Smith, my sister

  Elizabeth Avery

  Sue Foster and Sue Lund

  Richard Corman

  And from the early days . . .

  Warren Jay Hecht, Barbara Grossman, Max Apple

  The Hopwood Program at the University of Michigan

  The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown