Manuscript for Murder

by Jessica Fletcher

  So what was I missing?

  I again bemoaned the fact that the theft of the pages salvaged from the fire would deny me the opportunity to probe that further. Again, I was struck by the sense that what I sought was right in front of me, but I couldn’t find it, the equivalent of stabbing in the dark.

  Maybe not for long, though. If Harry did have a line on the real Benjamin Tally, if I could coax Artie Gelber into identifying the source of the flagged fingerprints, maybe the manuscript’s true author would be revealed.

  And he might be the only person who knew the truth.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Harry was waiting outside LaGuardia for me in the back of an Uber car. He waved to me from a back door he was holding open, hustling me in before the airport police shooed the car off from the illegal parking spot it had just pulled into.

  “Where’s your car?” I asked him, climbing inside.

  He piled in after me and closed the door, the Uber driver immediately pulling away from the curb. “Towed. The parking ticket gestapo finally found it.”

  “Where?”

  “Parked in the bicycle lane in front of my building.”

  “Nice way to disguise its presence.”

  “I thought so.”

  I’d opted to fly this time, instead of wasting interminable hours on the long train ride, especially with no salacious manuscript to help me pass the time.

  “You call Artie Gelber?”

  I nodded. “He’s expecting us at One Police Plaza within the next hour.”

  “I’ll wait in the car.”

  “No, you won’t, and Artie doesn’t hate you, Harry.”

  “Yes, he does. Wouldn’t surprise me if Gelber’s the one who sicced the parking ticket secret police on me.”

  “Not his style.”

  “Which raises another question,” Harry said, flashing his trademark scowl, which made his jowls look like they were about to slide off his face. “What was it that brought your friend Artie to the scene of Thomas Rudd’s death?”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “He’s part of the Major Case Squad, right?”

  I nodded.

  “So since when is a suspected arson considered a major crime?”

  “Good point,” I said to Harry, realizing it was something that I’d missed. “What are you thinking?”

  “I’m not. I try to avoid thinking at all costs. It gives me a headache, and most of my thoughts don’t lead anywhere but someplace bad.”

  “It led to those fingerprints.”

  “The title page,” Harry said, settling back in his seat. “Front of it yielded a mess of smudges, but prints only identifiable as Lane Barfield’s or his assistant, Zara’s.”

  Something about that grabbed my attention, but Harry continued before I could figure out why.

  “So I had my guy, who was born an expert in latent prints, run a check of the back. By the way, his services didn’t come cheap.”

  “A bill, Harry. Send me a bill. So that’s where he pulled these other prints that got flagged somewhere in the system.”

  He nodded. “It occurred to me that any number of people could have routinely touched the front of the title page—”

  “But only someone actually holding it, reading it, would leave their prints on the backs of pages as well,” I finished for him, picturing the way I held loose pages, which was more or less typical.

  Harry gazed across the seat at me, pretending to be impressed. “You should think about becoming a mystery writer.”

  “I was thinking detective.”

  “According to my bank account, being a writer pays better.”

  “You’re coming in with me to see Artie,” I insisted.

  “Why?”

  “Because I’ll double your rate.”

  He flashed that trademark scowl again. “What’s two times nothing?”

  * * *

  • • •

  “I guess thanks are in order,” I said to Artie. “What made you assign someone to watch over me? Was it what happened to Thomas Rudd?”

  He looked across the big desk in his office on the Major Case Squad level of One Police Plaza.

  “Along with your publisher.” Artie nodded.

  “Two potential suicides.”

  “Since there were indications Rudd’s was anything but that, I did the math.”

  “What did it add up to?”

  “That you might be next, because of something you weren’t telling me.”

  “There was nothing to tell you at the time.”

  “And now?”

  I thought of the murders of Alicia Bond and A. J. Falcone. Then me narrowly avoiding being roasted alive and then the manuscript disappearing. And I hadn’t even gotten to the part about Tommy Halperin in my mind.

  “Now’s different, Artie,” I said. “A whole lot different.”

  Artie nodded, as if I was telling him something he already knew. “Mort called me.”

  “Did he?”

  “We’re starting a club.”

  “What club is that?”

  “The Club for Cops Driven Crazy by Jessica Fletcher.”

  “Pretty exclusive.”

  “We’re the charter members. After speaking to Mort, I’m thinking about resigning from the club and having you arrested for withholding evidence in the form of that manuscript.”

  “Well,” I told him, “I’m not withholding it anymore.”

  “Only because it managed to disappear.” He shook his head, with his eyes jabbing me like daggers. “What exactly were you thinking, Jessica?”

  “That I wasn’t sure. And by the time I pretty much was, your man had saved my life and the manuscript was no longer in any condition to do you any good. Besides . . . ,” I continued, but let my voice tail off.

  “Besides what?”

  “If that manuscript contains the motive behind all this, I can’t find it.”

  Artie almost laughed. “And, of course, if you can’t find it, then nobody else could, either, never mind anyone in One Police Plaza.”

  “That was my thinking at the time, yes.”

  “And now, after somebody tried to drill you with a twelve-gauge, somebody who ended up dead himself minutes later?”

  “You run Tommy Halperin through the system, Artie?”

  He nodded. “And found pretty much the same thing Mort did.”

  “Pretty much?”

  “The FBI’s trying to backtrack his transactions. Somebody hiring him to kill would have to pay him, right? So where’s the money? Hey, there’s a thought: Maybe if we find out who routed it to Tommy, we’ll be on our way to catching whatever Deep State is behind all this. That’s called police work, Jessica. It’s what we could’ve already been doing if you’d been up-front with me earlier.” His gaze tightened and moved back to Harry. “Instead of using hacks to track down fingerprints.”

  “Hacks?” Harry repeated, but he didn’t push Artie further, turning toward me instead. “You want to ask him or should I?” Harry said, looking at me as if Artie wasn’t even in the room.

  I knew Harry was referring to Artie’s presence at the scene of Thomas Rudd’s death, but I wasn’t ready to broach that subject yet.

  “Ask me what?” Artie wondered.

  “What a top cop from the Major Case Squad was doing at an arson investigation.”

  If Artie was bothered by the challenge, he didn’t show it. “Ruling out that it was a major crime. Routine Homeland Security procedure these days with any case involving combustibles.”

  Harry started nodding and didn’t stop.

  “Satisfied?” Artie asked him.

  Harry stopped nodding. “No, because I’ve got a feeling there was more.”

  Artie didn’t deny it. He actually smiled slightl
y.

  “There was,” he conceded.

  “A politician, something like that?”

  Now it was Artie pretending that Harry wasn’t in the room; he trained his attention on me. “Leave it alone, Jessica. The person’s identity has nothing to do with what you’re after. Trust me on that.”

  I pictured some big New York honcho’s mistress as one of Thomas Rudd’s neighbors or something similar. One Police Plaza itself, meanwhile, served as the headquarters of the NYPD. A fourteen-story, multiwindowed concrete slab of a building located on Park Row, closed to civilian traffic since the aftermath of 9/11, but not for us since my appointment with Artie Gelber secured us passage through the checkpoint at the end of the block. I seemed to recall lingering public complaints over the resulting security perimeter blocking off such a large swath of residential area at the inconvenience especially of residents. Other than modest refinements, One Police Plaza (or 1PP for short), the perimeter, and the inconvenience remained.

  The vertical blinds in Artie’s office were tilted just enough to keep anyone inside out of clear view, at the expense of keeping most of the sun out, too.

  “What about the identity of the man whose fingerprints got flagged?”

  Artie’s glance cheated toward Harry before fixing on me. “You mean the fingerprints somebody unauthorized tried to run through the system?”

  “Hey,” Harry protested, “he was authorized. All my inside contacts are authorized. That’s what makes them inside contacts.”

  Artie didn’t appreciate the flippant nature of Harry’s tone. “By unauthorized, I was referring to you.”

  “Guilty as charged, Lieutenant.”

  “What makes someone want to risk their career for you?”

  Harry’s jowls started their trademark slide. “Beats me. I’m broke, a genuine pain in the ass, and my car got towed this morning, which I’m guessing you already know about.”

  Artie’s expression begged to differ as he looked toward me again. “I want to know exactly what it is you’re looking for, Jessica, and I want to know why.”

  * * *

  • • •

  I told him everything from the beginning, even though that meant repeating some things Artie had already learned from Mort or Ben McCreedy, the big NYPD officer from the train who’d ended up saving my life.

  “Okay,” he said, once I’d finished, “you believe all this is about the contents of this missing manuscript, but nothing in those contents jumps out at you.”

  “Did The Da Vinci Code make you think about Christianity differently, Artie?”

  “I never read it, but I saw the movie.”

  “Same thing,” Harry interjected.

  “What’s your point, Jessica?”

  “That oftentimes thrillers and mysteries raise something just outlandish enough to make for a great concept but too outlandish to be believed or be even remotely connected to the truth. I’d say The Affair follows that model.”

  “So you’re telling me you had things wrong.”

  “No, Artie, I’m telling you I haven’t found what’s right yet. That manuscript is the key to all of this—I know it is. I just haven’t figured out why, and the only person who can tell me—us—why is the author, Benjamin Tally, who we’ve been unable to identify or find.”

  “And you figure those were his fingerprints on the manuscript?”

  “Back of the title page,” I affirmed. “Makes sense when you think about it. Harry was able to identify the prints of Lane Barfield and his assistant on both the front and the back as well. There was only one other set that appeared in both places and those are the prints that got flagged.”

  “For good reason, Jessica.”

  “What reason is that, Artie? What makes the owner of those prints so important? Who’s protecting him?”

  “I am,” Artie said flatly. “I’m the one who’s protecting him.”

  * * *

  • • •

  “He’s in Witness Protection,” he continued. “The name he’s living under now is Alejandro Chacón. Back when he used to be somebody else, he gave up a whole bunch of MS-13 members to the task force.”

  “Bad hombres,” Harry noted.

  Artie looked his way. “I take it back; you really are a good detective. So Chacón serves up these names on a platter and we build him a new identity, get him resettled across the river in Jersey. One of those town house communities that go on forever.”

  “Don’t tell me,” I picked up. “You also got him a job working for Lane Barfield’s company.”

  “Turns out he loves books, so pushing a cart in and out of the elevator, delivering this and that, was right up his alley. I forgot to ask him if he’s read any of yours, Jessica.”

  “I’d like the chance to ask him myself. Where is he, Artie?”

  “We’ve got him stashed right here at One PP until we arrange for resettlement. Thanks to you and your hack, he’s been compromised. You want him to talk, you better have a signed book or two ready.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Five minutes later, Alejandro Chacón was escorted into Artie’s office by a pair of uniformed officers who took their leave but remained posted on either side of the office door beyond. I assumed they’d been assigned to protect the informant my efforts had compromised, potentially placing his life in danger at the hands of the gang he’d given up. The glare he cast me indicated Artie had made sure he’d been briefed on the circumstances and the mess I’d made of his new life.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Chacón,” I said, not bothering to introduce myself.

  “That’s not my name,” he said from across the small conference table against the far wall away from the window in the back of Artie’s office.

  “I know and I had no idea my associate and I were risking your safety by running your fingerprints.”

  “You didn’t risk my safety; you risked my life.”

  “I believe the man who ran the company you worked for was murdered. In both his case and that of one of his authors, it was made to look like suicide. Another author was trampled by a horse, a fourth was shot, and whoever’s behind all of this tried to burn my house down after tying me to a chair. And it’s all because of that manuscript we found your prints on—the back of the title page specifically. Could you explain how they got there?”

  “Because I started reading it.”

  I exchanged a glance with Harry. I wondered how he felt about being referred to as “my associate.”

  “It was sitting on the desk of Mr. Barfield’s assistant, the one with the funny name.”

  “Zara,” I reminded him.

  “Zara, yes. I was dropping off the usual correspondence around lunchtime maybe two weeks ago, and I saw it there, like somebody had just delivered it.”

  “But not you,” I said, trying to fill in all the blanks.

  “I might have in a package or something. But these were loose pages, sitting right there on the edge of Zara’s desk.”

  I nodded, feeling a pang of both remorse and sadness over the fact that Zara was still missing, potentially yet another victim of the secrets the manuscript held. But there was also something else, the same feeling that had struck me before of something awry, like an itch in the center of my back I couldn’t reach.

  “There was nobody around,” Chacón continued. “I just started reading it. Standing up right there, I started reading it. I was maybe a dozen pages in when Zara caught me in the act.”

  “Was she upset?”

  “She asked me what I thought. I said I wanted to read more and asked if I could make a copy. Bold move, given that I pushed a cart around, but I couldn’t help it.”

  I more than understood since the manuscript produced that same effect on me.

  “She said she couldn’t do it, that I should ask Mr. Barfield myself.
I didn’t, of course. Figured I’d just have to wait for the actual book like the rest of the world.”

  “Did Zara say anything else about the manuscript?”

  Chacón thought about that. “I don’t think so. She startled me and I knocked some of the pages over. I just wanted to put them back and be gone.”

  * * *

  • • •

  “We checked Zara’s apartment,” Artie said after Alejandro Chacón had been escorted from the office by his keepers. “And the emergency number she left with HR has been disconnected.”

  A pang of guilt rattled me. I couldn’t shake the possibility that Zara had been targeted because she’d aided my efforts to uncover any other author with a connection to The Affair. That had produced the names of A. J. Falcone and Alicia Bond, both of whom were now dead. Their murders had followed that of Thomas Rudd—who’d swiped a thumb drive from Lane Barfield’s desk because he thought it contained something other than a manuscript—and preceded the attempt on my life.

  A question on that note was plaguing me, but I was more concerned with Zara at present.

  “What about her parents?” I asked Artie.

  “A lot of ‘Larsons’ in the phone book, Jessica, and that’s just Manhattan. We dumped her cell phone records but this was only yesterday, after Mort filled in the blanks. It wasn’t a priority at that point.”

  “Wasn’t a priority?”

  “Being a missing person isn’t a crime, Jessica.”

  I felt the pang of guilt roll through me again, harder this time. I needed to see this all the way to the finish and do right by Zara.

  Artie excused himself to take a call, his eyes seeking me out as he listened to the voice on the other end.