Cold Blooded (Dennis McQueen 02)

  “This is not good, Bailey,” McQueen said.

  “We’re keeping it out of the workplace.”

  “If I noticed something, you don’t think someone else will?” he asked.

  “With all due respect, Dennis, you’re the smartest person in the squad and you only just noticed.”

  “That’s a left-handed compliment if I ever heard one.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “So what, you’ve got his private cell phone number?”

  “I’ve got all his numbers.”

  McQueen studied the surface of his black coffee.

  There was no guidance there on how to handle this situation, but was it his to handle? Wasn’t this between two consenting adults?

  “Dennis . . . you’re not going to do anything . . . are you?” she asked.

  “Like what? Blow the whistle?”

  “Or say anything to Ernesto—to the lieutenant?”

  “Ernesto?”

  “That’s his first name.”

  “I don’t think I knew that.”

  “Are you?”

  “Bailey, this is none of my business if it doesn’t interfere with the squad. Do you agree?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then as long as that doesn’t happen, I’ve got no business doing anything.”

  She sighed and said, “That’s a relief. It’s also a relief to finally tell somebody.”

  “You don’t have a friend you can talk to?”

  “I have no girlfriends,” she said, “and the only male friends I have are at work.”

  “What about a mother, or sister?”

  “No siblings, and my mother’s got Alzheimer’s, so there’s no talking to her.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “She’s in a nursing home,” she said. “I send money. I used to feel guilty about not going to see her, but she never remembered me, and it used to upset her.”

  He didn’t know what else to say.

  “Are you going to go and get Lydia Dean yourself?” she asked.

  “Me and the Double Ds, I think. That is, if the D.A. decides to charge her.”

  “Dennis . . . don’t you want some credit for this? I mean, shouldn’t you be talking to the D.A.?”

  “Bautista is the C.O.,” McQueen said. “We’ll play however he wants. I don’t care about credit, Bailey, I just want to get these killers off the streets. I know that’s corny, but it’s what I’m all about.”

  Sommers worried her bottom lip with her teeth. She knew Bautista intended to take credit for whatever collars McQueen came up with in the serial cases, and as long as the sergeant was okay with it, why should she worry? What she didn’t know was, if things went wrong, was McQueen going to take the fall himself?

  “We better get back,” McQueen said. “He might be looking for us.”

  “Okay.”

  As they stood up McQueen asked her, “Bailey, you sure you know what you’re doing?”

  “Actually, Dennis,” she said, “no, I’m not.”

  When they returned to the office and walked in together, Lieutenant Bautista gave them a long look. He was standing next to McQueen’s desk with file folders in his hands.

  “Something I can help you with, Loo?” McQueen asked.

  “I’m sending copies of the case files over to the Brooklyn D.A.’s office, Sergeant,” Bautista said. “He would like to see you in his office at ten A.M.”

  “Okay, Loo,” McQueen said. “I’ll be there.”

  “How is Allan Hansen’s statement coming?” Bautista asked. “I’d like to include it.”

  “Bailey was just going to go downstairs and check on that,” McQueen said, “weren’t you, Bailey?”

  “Oh, uh, yeah, I was,” she said. “I’ll be right back.”

  “Bailey,” McQueen said, before she could leave, “why don’t you take the files from the lieutenant and make copies for him while you’re down there?”

  “Sure.”

  She grabbed the files from Bautista, gave both men a look in turn, each meaning something different, and then left the office.

  “Was there something you wanted to talk to me about, Sergeant?” Bautista asked.

  McQueen decided not to let on he knew about Bautista and Sommers unless the man flat-out asked. “No, sir,” he said. “Nothing.”

  Bautista studied him for a moment before continuing. He didn’t know if the man had come to any conclusions about him.

  “The D.A. didn’t sound very encouraging on the phone, but I think he’ll change his mind when he sees the files.”

  “I hope so.”

  “If not,” Bautista added, “maybe talking to you will give him the push he needs to file.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  “Yes, I’m sure you will. I’ll wait in my office for Detective Sommers to bring back those files, and the statement. Send her in when she returns, will you?”

  “Sure thing, boss.”

  The man hesitated long enough for McQueen to expect him to say something else, but then he turned and went into his office.

  McQueen sat at his desk. He thought it odd that after talking with Sommers, and now seeing Bautista, he felt . . . dirty.

  When had he turned into an old prude?

  Chapter 63

  McQueen had both Diver and Dolan accompany Allan Hansen to Central Booking on Gold Street in downtown Brooklyn. Sommers delivered the file copies and Hansen’s statement to Lieutenant Bautista, who called an outside messenger service to get it to the D.A.’s office quickly. After that was done he came out and bade them all good night. By that time the next shift was on, and Paddy Vadala was seated at his desk, across from his partner Tom Mollica.

  “Looks like you’re makin’ progress, boss,” he said to McQueen. “Maybe we’ll get some people back on the charts sooner than we thought?”

  “One day and you’re complaining already?” McQueen asked.

  “Don’t listen to him, Sarge,” Mollica said. “His wife’s giving him a hard time, again.”

  Sommers came over to McQueen’s desk and asked, “Anything else before I head out, Dennis?”

  “No, Bailey, you can go.”

  “Good luck at the D.A.’s office in the morning.”

  “Thanks.”

  She hesitated, like she wanted to say something else, but then turned and left.

  “I heard some talk down in the precinct,” Vadala said to his partner.

  “What’s that?” the gray-haired Mollica asked around his ever-present pipe.

  “Seems our lady detective might be makin’ nice with the new boss. Maybe she’s buckin’ for a promotion.”

  “Knock off that kind of talk, Paddy,” McQueen said.

  “Hey, it’s not me, boss,” Vadala said, defensively.

  “It’s goin’ around downstairs.”

  “Well, don’t pass it around up here if you don’t have proof.”

  “Sorry,” Vadala gave his partner a look, but Mollica just shook his head and lowered his eyes to his desk.

  This was what McQueen had been afraid of, only he’d hoped he wouldn’t hear it for a long time—or not at all. If the word was going around maybe somebody saw something, unless it was just all conjecture and rumor. Maybe somebody downstairs had made a pass at Sommers and she’d rejected him. There were enough cops who were jerks who would start that kind of rumor because their pride was hurt. Or somebody may have been trying to get at Bautista that way, like another lieutenant who had it in for him.

  He had just about decided to go home when he changed his mind and made a phone call.

  “Meet me for dinner,” he said into the phone. “I’ve got some stuff to talk to you about.”

  “Where?” Mace Willis asked.

  “I was surprised to get your call,” Mace said as they were seated.

  In the end he had given her the choice of places to meet, and she picked a restaurant in Greenpoint. “Why out there?”

  “I don’t want to go too far from home.
My son’s got the flu. I want to be close by in case the sitter calls on my cell.”

  When he reached the restaurant she was already there, sitting in the front waiting for a table. She was dressed more casually than he’d seen her, and wearing a pair of wireless glasses that were almost invisible on her face. Still, they gave her a softer look.

  While waiting they engaged in the weakest kind of small talk until he said, “I didn’t know you had kids.”

  “One,” she said. “Andy’s six, and he’s a big baby when he’s sick, like most men.”

  “Aren’t they all?”

  “Do you have any kids?”

  “Yes,” he said, but didn’t elaborate.

  As soon as they sat down she said how surprised she was that he’d called.

  “Why is that?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, shrugging. “Except for the other day I hadn’t heard from you in months.”

  “So why’d you agree to come?”

  “I heard you collared a suspect,” she said. “I figured that was what you wanted to talk to me about.”

  When the waiter came they each ordered a hamburger platter. Neither one wanted to spend too much time deciding.

  “Did your source happen to give you the suspect’s name?” he asked.

  “No,” she said. “I figured I’d get that from you.”

  “Okay,” he said, after a moment, “the name Allan Hansen ring a bell?”

  “Sure,” she said, “amateur firebug, but a talented one. I’ve been tryin’ to hang a couple of fires on him. He’s who you have for the Lydia Studios fire?”

  “We’ve got him for more than that,” he said, and explained.

  “Wow,” she said. “I wouldn’t have figured Hansen for murder.”

  “What about the fire?”

  “Well, yeah,” she said, “it could’ve been him. It’s a little different from some of the other fires I’ve suspected him of, though.”

  “In what way?”

  “The others were residential,” she said, “and probably just malicious. This one would have been for pay. I mean, I’m not surprised if he’s started to hire himself out. I am kinda disappointed with myself that I didn’t look at him for this. How’d you get onto him, anyway?”

  He told her the steps they’d taken in their investigation, and how Diver and Dolan had simply followed up some leads and found him sleeping on a girlfriend’s couch.

  “And then there’s the mothballs.”

  “What?”

  “My guys found the basement of his mother’s house was filled with mothballs.”

  “Filled with them?”

  “Well, three cartons. According to my detective, who spent some time working Arson years ago,” he explained, “someone could make a device using that.”

  “That’s plenty. Do you think the Stephens case could be connected to the string of murders?”

  “I’m thinkin’ this is a helluva coincidence,” he said, “and it makes me antsy.”

  “You think he’s lying?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “He could just be trying to make a deal for himself to get out from under the murder charge.”

  “You’d trade for that?”

  “Not me,” he said, “but maybe the D.A. would. I’m gonna see him tomorrow morning.”

  “About making a deal?”

  “That,” he said, “but mostly about something else.”

  “What’s Hansen lookin’ to trade for?”

  He told her what Hansen had told them about Lydia Dean. She looked stunned.

  “I didn’t see that coming. Do you believe him?”

  “Again, I don’t know, and again, it doesn’t matter.”

  “The D.A.”

  “Right.”

  “Well,” she said, frowning, “it would sure close out the fire for me and for your Arson Task Force—”

  “—if they’re even still lookin’ at it,” he said.

  “—and it would close out the case on Victor Dean. You think the D.A. will file without a body?”

  “Depends on how strong he thinks Hansen is as a source, and how much mileage he thinks he can get out of the Lydia Studios fire. She collected the insurance, so even if he can’t get her for murder, he can get her for fraud.”

  “And what does all this mean for your case?”

  “This is what’s drivin’ me batty,” he said. “I thought you might have a fresh perspective.”

  “Why me?”

  “I wanted to talk it over with someone outside my squad,” he said. “You came to mind.”

  “I’m flattered,” she said. “Go ahead.”

  “I’m convinced I’ve got a serial killer working, and that Thomas Wingate—Lydia’s brother—was the first intended victim.”

  “Intended? Isn’t he dead?”

  “That’s where this gets dicey,” McQueen said. He went on to explain the theory he and Sommers had spitballed.

  “So basically what you’re saying is the killer took credit for Thomas Wingate, even though he didn’t actually kill him. He just . . . removed him, put him on ice and then dumped him two weeks later.”

  “Right.”

  “And that was the first of—how many?”

  “Three last winter, one so far this winter.”

  She shook her head.

  “I’ve got good sources, McQueen, but I ain’t heard a peep about this one.”

  “What about your parallel investigation?”

  “Well, like I told you, I never once looked at Hansen for the Lydia Studios fire. I did, however, suspect the husband and wife of fraud. Obviously, I couldn’t prove it, and she collected. I gotta tell you I like her for all this.”

  “Even the murder of her husband?”

  “That’s one cold bitch,” Mace said. “Yeah, I think she probably did her old man.”

  “And left the body in the fire?”

  “Not in that building,” she said. “We didn’t come up with a body, or the remnants of one.”

  “So, according to my own theory, we’ve got her hiring Hansen to set the fire. Then she goes in, kills her husband and pulls his body out of the building while her brother is overcome by the fire, dies of smoke inhalation, and is, in turn, removed from the building by my killer.”

  “That’s what you’re saying.”

  “And they never ran into each other.”

  “That’s not what you’re saying,” she said. “Hansen says he saw Mrs. Dean.”

  “Right.”

  “What if Mrs. Dean saw something, too?”

  Chapter 64

  McQueen arrived at the Brooklyn D.A.’s office at nine-fifty, but was kept waiting until exactly ten. The D.A., Edward Delaney, was a notoriously punctual man.

  “Please, have a seat, Sergeant,” Delaney said. McQueen sat across from the man with a case file in his lap. He’d stopped by the office first and had gotten some good news, which he brought with him.

  Ed Delaney was a good-looking district attorney on the rise. In fact, he reminded McQueen of Lieutenant Bautista. They both had the youth and the looks to go far. All they needed was the judgment. From what the veteran police detective knew of the young D.A., he didn’t have it. Of course, what he did have he had in abundance, and that usually made up for whatever was lacking.

  McQueen hated politics, and politicians. He hated how they interfered with him doing his job.

  There were other men in the room, and Delaney made the introductions.

  “Detective Sergeant Dennis McQueen, these are ADA’s Kearney and Worth.”

  Kearney was another in the mold of Delaney, and was probably next in line for the D.A. job when Delaney ascended. Worth was white-haired, florid-faced, and looked to be several months from retirement. McQueen knew him from other cases over the years. The man had been in the D.A.’s office for a long time without any danger of ever moving into the top job. In that room, though, he was the voice of experience and he was—in McQueen’s estimation—the man with the judgm
ent.

  “Sergeant McQueen and I have met before,” Worth said.

  “Oh,” Delaney said, “well, maybe that will help here.”

  “Uh, we’re waiting for one other person, Ed,” Kearny reminded his boss.

  Delaney looked around the room as if surprised and said, “So we are.”

  At that moment the office door opened and the D.A.’s secretary ushered Lieutenant Bautista into the room. It had been McQueen’s understanding that he would be meeting with the D.A. Bautista’s presence was a surprise.

  “Sergeant,” Bautista said, taking a seat away from McQueen.

  “Sir.”

  It wasn’t lost on McQueen that the seating arrangements in the room had left him quite on his own.

  “Sergeant,” the D.A. said, “it’s been brought to my attention that you have been handling the case of—well, several cases, I guess, involving the same people. The, uh, Dean family?” Delaney made a show of looking at his notes.

  “It started as the Wingate case, sir,” McQueen said. He explained about Thomas Wingate’s murder, and how it had led to the arson case involving Lydia Designs and then to the disappearance and possible murder of Victor Dean.

  “Right,” Delaney said, “the Deans. Prominent people in the borough, I’m sure you know.”

  “No,” McQueen said, “I wasn’t aware of that.”

  “Contributors to the mayor’s last campaign, I understand.”

  The Brooklyn D.A. was definitely not someone who had voted for the last mayor. If he could use any case to make the mayor look bad, he would. McQueen already had a bad feeling about where this was going.

  “I knew they had a design business,” he said, “but I didn’t think they were influential.”

  “I suppose it’s not your job to know those things, Sergeant,” Delaney said, “but it is mine.”

  McQueen remained silent.

  “So, tragedy has befallen this family on more than one occasion, it seems. Murder, arson . . . hmm,” Delaney said, still looking at notes undoubtedly supplied to him by Lieutenant Bautista. “Yes, I see . . . after the arson the husband disappears, the fire is deemed suspicious, but nothing can be proved against the wife.” He looked up abruptly at McQueen, met his eyes. “Looks like the insurance company paid off, even though the case was never closed.”