by Dana Perry
The Golden Girl
A completely unputdownable crime thriller
Dana Perry
Books by Dana Perry
The Silent Victim
The Golden Girl
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The Silent Victim (Available in the UK and the US)
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
The Silent Victim
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Prologue
On a hot summer night in New York City, a policewoman named Maura Walsh walked into a strip club. She was pretty – maybe even more attractive than the dancers the men were paying to see. But the uniform made it clear she was there on business, and everyone gave her a wide berth. She walked directly over to the bar, pocketed a wad of cash the bartender handed her and left.
A short time later, the same scenario played out at a house of prostitution. It was located in a building where tenants had complained about male customers showing up at all hours of the day and night, but no one ever seemed to do anything about it. Maura Walsh went into the office of the woman who ran the business, closed the door and accepted more money.
The next stop was at a restaurant. It was a trendy singles place, and lots of young people were eating and drinking and having a good time. She sat down at a table, but didn’t eat or drink anything. The manager came over, they had a brief conversation and money changed hands.
An hour after that, Maura Walsh was found shot to death on the street in the Little Italy section of Manhattan.
The news accounts the next day described her in glowing terms as a hero cop, a decorated five-year veteran of the force and the daughter of Deputy NYPD Commissioner Mike Walsh.
There was no mention of the strip club, the house of prostitution, the restaurant or the payoffs she took.
That would all come later.
One
Crazy, senseless crimes always seem to happen in the summertime in New York City. Son of Sam was in the summer of 1977. The Preppie Murder Case, when Robert Chambers inexplicably strangled Jennifer Levin during sex after picking her up at a singles bar on the Upper East Side, happened in August of 1986. And I was attacked, brutally beaten and left for dead on a hot summer night in Central Park twelve years ago, just like the night when Maura Walsh was murdered.
“You should take some time off, Jessie,” Danny Knowlton, the assistant city desk editor at the New York Tribune where I work these days as a crime reporter, said to me when I walked into the newsroom on this summer morning.
“I’m fine, Danny.”
“A week, even a couple of weeks – no problem. It’s summer. Go to the beach or something. Enjoy yourself for once.”
“Maybe later.”
I knew why Danny Knowlton was so concerned about me, and it wasn’t because he was a warm, caring human being. Danny was a newspaper editor. And the words “warm, caring human being” and “newspaper editor” rarely belonged together. Certainly not in the case of an editor like Danny Knowlton, an ambitious young guy who was always looking for a big story to help him further his career.
No, my happiness and health was important to Danny because I’d been very good for him recently.
I had broken a huge Page 1 exclusive: the truth about what really happened to me during the attack in Central Park twelve years ago as well as the truth about the murders of several other women. It had implicated some of the most powerful people in the city. Since then, I’d been on the front pages of newspapers around the country; on the covers of magazines; and a regular topic of conversation by all the TV talking heads on the 24-hour news cycle.
Jessie Tucker, media superstar.
Just like I’d been after the first attack.
But the trauma and emotion I went through to get this sensational story – both now and in opening doors to fears I’d left behind me long ago – had taken their toll on me.
Danny Knowlton thought the answer to all this was rest and relaxation, but I knew better. I knew what I really needed now. I needed another story. So I decided to go after the biggest story around.
“I want to work on the Maura Walsh story,” I told him.
Three weeks ago, Policewoman Maura Walsh was found shot dead on a Manhattan street. It was only the third time a female NYPD officer had died in the line of duty. Maura Walsh was also the daughter of Deputy Police Commissioner Mike Walsh, and the whole Walsh family had a long, honorable tradition with the NYPD. Despite a massive police investigation, no one had been able to find out any more since then about who killed her or why.
I’d been dealing with all the aftermath of my big Central Park story when it happened and hadn’t been involved in the Tribune coverage.
But I was the paper’s crime reporter, and now I wanted to write about Maura Walsh.
“We went really big on the coverage of that story at the time,” Danny pointed out to me. “If there’s an arrest in the case, we’ll jump back on it. But there’s a whole lot of other breaking news out there now which has pushed Maura Walsh off the front page…”
I looked over at the front page of the Tribune on his desk. The headline said: HEAT WAVE IN THIRD DAY: NO END IN SIGHT. I had an editor once who refused to run these kind of weather stories. He said it never made sense to make people buy the paper to tell them the weather they already knew. But the Tribune didn’t follow that policy these days.
“We’re going to keep telling people it’s hot outside?” I said. “I think they already know that, Danny.”
“Don’t knock weather stories – they sell newspapers for us.”
“So would a good story about the murder of a woman police officer.”
“A lot of other reporters in town have already covered that story, Jessie.”
“Not the way I’ll do it.”
That wasn’t my ego talking. There were a lot of good reporters at the Tribune and elsewhere who covered bre
aking news, but my job at the paper was to be the crime specialist who went beyond the daily headlines to get the real story. I explained to Danny now how I wanted to do that with Maura Walsh.
“Let me do a deep dive into the Maura Walsh story. An in-depth look at how a woman cop from a legendary NYPD family like this lives – and tragically dies – on the streets of New York City. I’d talk to other cops, friends and family. I have a source in the department who might even be able to get me an interview with Maura Walsh’s father. The deputy commissioner hasn’t talked to anyone about his daughter’s killing since a brief press conference right after it happened. If I could get him to really open up to me, it would be a helluva exclusive.”
I could tell right away Danny liked the idea. And why not? It would be another feather in his cap as my editor if I could pull this off. We talked for a while about the logistics of how I would do it – and when it might run. Maybe a big Sunday piece for the Tribune. And we could break it first on the website Saturday night. Then push it out on Twitter, our app and all the other social media throughout the weekend.
“And you’re absolutely sure you want to keep working, Jessie? After all you’ve gone through recently?” he asked, even though I think he knew what I would say.
“Yes.”
“What are you looking for? Even more Jessie Tucker headlines?” He smiled.
“No, I’d just like to get some answers about Maura Walsh.”
I walked back to my desk in the newsroom and grabbed a granola bar from my desk drawer.
“How’d it go with Danny?” asked Michelle Caradonna, the reporter who had recently moved next to me.
“He wanted me to take some time off, but I said no.”
“I’ve been trying for weeks to get a vacation, but he won’t give it to me! That’s not fair. You have all the luck.”
“Yeah, too bad you couldn’t get attacked and nearly killed in Central Park too, huh, Michelle?”
She looked embarrassed. “God, I’m sorry, Jessie. I wasn’t thinking—”
“Don’t worry about it.”
Michelle was twenty-five years old, going on about fifty. She seemed to be trying to cram a whole lifetime of living into a quarter of a century. Her goal was to win a Pulitzer Prize before she turned thirty. She was absolutely fearless, and there was nothing she wouldn’t do for a story. She’d parachuted from an airplane onto a private beach in the Hamptons to cover a celebrity wedding; gone undercover as a patient to do an exposé on medical malpractice; and even walked into a lion cage at the zoo to show how lax safety regulations were. I told her once that if she didn’t slow down, she’d have nothing left to accomplish by the time she was my age.
I looked around the office. It was a little after ten a.m., and the newsroom was beginning to fill up. Within a few hours, it would be a maelstrom of activity as the staff raced to put out the day’s news. There was an adrenalin in the room – an energy, a dedication – that I felt whenever I was here. It was what kept me working for the Tribune even after everything that had happened to me.
Even for a newspaper, the Tribune was a pretty eclectic place.
Take Danny, for instance. He had long, scraggly blond hair which he wore in a ponytail, was always dressed in T-shirts and jeans and pretty much looked like an exile from a heavy metal rock band. His temper tantrums are legendary. He once threw a chair though a plate-glass window. Another time he expressed his displeasure with a story by chasing a reporter down the street in front of the Tribune building and dumping a cup of coffee on his head. Much of this anger no doubt was fueled by his ambition to be the top man on the city desk. But his boss Norman Isaacs – the aged, longtime city editor of the Tribune – kept fending off retirement.
Isaacs was the exact opposite in temperament to Danny Knowlton. Plodding, cautious, and never wanting to make waves in the newsroom or the corporate hierarchy. He was known for announcing at the beginning of most workdays that he “just wanted to work a clean shift” without any problems, hassles or controversy. “No-Guts Norman” was what Danny called Isaacs behind his back because he rarely pushed hard on a story. But that careful approach had kept Isaacs as the city editor at the Tribune for more than a quarter of a century, so maybe he really did know what he was doing after all.
Occupying another corner of the newsroom was Peter Ventura. Peter was once one of the most legendary newspaper columnists in New York City – but now all the long nights spent in bars around town had caught up with him. He didn’t break too many big stories anymore, but on the other hand he didn’t seem particularly bothered by it. Right then, for instance, he was sleeping with his head on the keyboard of his computer. He slept a lot at his desk these days. No one bothered him much, although someone on the city desk had decided on a little fun a few weeks before by calling his extension while he was in the middle of one of his naps. When he sleepily picked up the phone, the person on the other end shouted: “Peter – your chair’s on fire!” They say he jumped a mile, and the entire newsroom exploded in laughter. Maybe someday the paper will get rid of him, but I doubt it. He is an institution here and the paper owes him a lot.
The managing editor was a woman named Lorraine Molinski. Blonde, fortyish, a bit overweight, she’d been at the paper for only a few years. Before that, she had been a publicist and then an advertising woman and then spent a stint on the copy desk at the New York Post. When she was promoted to managing editor here, a lot of people wondered how she got the job with so little reporting experience. There was a rumor that it might have been because she was sleeping with a member of the owner’s family. Maybe because of that, Lorraine always seemed paranoid about her job – she needed to constantly remind people that she was in charge. A lot of people don’t like Lorraine, and the nickname they’ve given her was “Lorr-Reign of Terror”. I’d never had a problem with her, though. She’d always been nice to me. And I liked the fact that there was something a bit – well – almost dangerous about her. There was also a rumor amongst my fellow reporters that she carried a gun. I remember a day when some of us were supposed to get White House security checks for a visit by the President, and Lorraine begged out. She said she didn’t think doing a background investigation on her would be good for her or the paper. I liked that. Someday I knew I had to find out more about Lorraine Molinski.
OK, I don’t have much of a life outside the Tribune.
I was an only child.
My mother was dead.
And I never even knew my father.
I was engaged once, a long time ago, but that fell through. So did the last big romance I had with a guy who lived on the West Coast. I had high hopes for that relationship for a while. But in the end there was just too much distance between us, both geographically and otherwise. So I’m alone these days.
All I have in my life is my job.
And the people around me here.
This newsroom…
Well, this newsroom is my life.
Two
Maura Walsh’s body had been found on the street in the neighborhood known as Little Italy in downtown Manhattan.
She and her partner, a veteran patrolman named Billy Renfro, had begun their tour of duty at five p.m. that evening.
They were assigned to street patrol in a squad car out of the 22nd Police Precinct, which was located on 70th Street near Third Avenue.
Police records showed that Walsh and Renfro reported making five stops that night before calling in a Code 7 – police jargon for a meal break – at 10:30. Two of the stops were at restaurants or bars where disturbances had occurred; one at an apartment house; another at a bodega; and a fifth with someone listed as an “informant” on East 86th Street between Second and Third Avenue.
The explanation given for each stop was a simple “pursuit of citizen complaint”. Of course, lots of cops called in or filled out paperwork with vague entries like that because they didn’t have time to deal with all the bureaucratic details that were a part of the job. Most of the time it didn�
�t matter. Unless something went wrong, like it had for Maura Walsh.
Her partner, Billy Renfro, said he’d left her in the squad car while he went into a pizza place to pick up an order for them. When he returned to the car, she was gone. He later discovered her body lying in an alley not far away. She had been shot two times in the chest with her own gun. The gun was missing.
By the time the paramedics arrived at the scene, Maura Walsh was already dead. It took her a long time to die though, the Medical Examiner’s office later reported. The gunshot wounds had immobilized her and left her too weak to even call out for help, but she was still alive for at least fifteen minutes and maybe for as long as a full hour.
If she could have reached her police radio, maybe she could have signaled someone she was in trouble. But the radio wasn’t on her body when she was found. It was discovered later in a trashcan down the street, dumped there by whoever killed her.