by Blake Banner
“One,” I said.
“Hello.”
I ignored her and went on. “Cherise Brown married to Earl Brown, like so many men, a no-good, lowdown drunk. She, apparently blinded by love, had two children by him, Leroy and Shevron. While he was at home watching TV, drinking whiskey and smoking weed, she was at work raising money to feed her family. This went on for eight years. Her sister Sonia, our informant, advised her repeatedly to leave him and start a new life, but Cherise made excuses for him and they stayed together.”
Dehan rested her ass on the side of her desk and frowned at me. I went on.
“On May 14th, 2010, Cherise arrived home early from work and found Earl raping six-year-old Shevron while eight-year-old Leroy watched. It turned out later this had been going on for some years, to both of the kids.”
“Son of a bitch. What did Mom do?”
“She went to the kitchen, grabbed the kitchen knife and attacked him. There was a fight.”
“In front of the kids?”
“Mm-hmm, Shevron tried to protect her mother and Earl hit her so hard he broke her neck. Reconstruction by the ME and the detectives at the time was that Cherise stabbed Earl in the back, he somehow took the knife from her and stabbed her several times in the belly before collapsing, and they both died.”
“Leaving Leroy as the only living witness to the violent death of his entire family. Holy sh…”
I nodded. “But that’s not all of it.”
“There’s more?”
“Yup.” I collected up the copies and dropped into my chair at the desk. She shifted round to look at me. “Leroy went to an orphanage for about six months. Almost immediately, as soon as the murder was reported in the press, the Mitchells, a liberal, academic family who were residents of the Bronx, applied to adopt Leroy. They both lectured at NYU. He’s a psychiatrist, she a sociologist. There was some concern about whether a white family should adopt a black orphan but after six months and threats of legal action, it was approved.”
“Kid had a shrink?”
“Simone Robles. In the file. He was still only eight.”
“The Mitchells had kids?”
“Two kids, younger than Leroy. Marcus, seven and Lea, five. Apparently they got on well, and the whole family was keen to make it work. Seems the kids liked each other, but…”
“There had to be a but.”
“It seems, when Leroy turned twelve, in August 2013, he began to change. He started talking to his aunt about how black men were better and stronger than white men, how white women preferred black men. He used to write her WhatsApp messages on the subject. Sonia spoke to Emma about it, but the Mitchells didn’t seem too concerned. They thought it was normal given the trauma he had suffered, and he’d get over it..”
“So what happened?”
“On June 13th, four years and a month, almost to the day, after his parents and his sister were killed, he was killed too, along with his adoptive sister, Lea.”
“Holy cow. How were they killed?”
“It was a Sunday, Brad and Emma Mitchell had been drinking coffee after breakfast and the kids were playing in the backyard. They had a big lawn and a garden shed where they kept the gardening tools. At some point, the Mitchells started to hear a lot of screaming coming from the shed. They ran to see what it was about, and found Lea and Leroy dead. There was a lot of blood on the floor. Lea had had her throat cut, and Leroy had been stabbed repeatedly in the back.”
Dehan was frowning hard. “What about the other boy, Marcus?”
“They found him in the shed, hiding under a tarpaulin. He was in severe shock. He hasn’t been able to help as a witness because he slipped into a catatonic depression and never really recovered. He has never spoken again, to this day.”
“Huh!”
“It was never solved. There was no DNA or forensic evidence and the case went cold.”
She nodded. “And the only witness was the kid, Marcus.”
“Yup.”
“OK…” She moved around to her chair and sat in it. “But I don’t see how we can do anything with this, Stone. Where the hell do you begin?”
I leaned forward with my elbows on the desk. “Sonia came to see me this morning and she brought, not so much new evidence as, old evidence with a new angle. It’s thin, but…” I shrugged. “I think it’s worth a look. It seems, a couple of weeks before he was killed, Leroy—or Lee, as his new family called him—sent a WhatsApp message to his aunt telling her that he thought Brad Mitchell was having an affair. He’d heard him on the phone and, apparently, he’d seen text messages. So he’d cut school a couple of times and been to the university, where he’d seen Brad with that woman.” I slid my cell across the table to her. “He sent her this picture.”
She glanced at it. “So what? Proves nothing. It’s not even suggestive.”
“Yeah, agreed. But Sonia and a workmate found an article in the paper which said that Brad Mitchell had opened a rehab clinic near White Plains, in the Silver Lake Preserve. The psychiatrist in charge of the Mitchell Clinic was to be Dr. Margaret Wagner, the woman in that photograph.”
She sagged back in her chair, made a wincing face and blew. “You’re right. It’s thin. It’s not thin, it’s anorexic supermodel skinny.”
“Yeah, I know, but Sonia makes the point, and I agree, Leroy threatened to blackmail Brad Mitchell. If the clinic was already on the cards back then, that’s a pretty strong motive for murder. Especially if the victim is not your own kid, but an increasingly obnoxious intruder.”
She screwed skepticism into her face. “But he’d also have to have killed his own daughter. And his wife says they were having coffee together. She’s not likely to alibi him if he’s killed her daughter.”
I shrugged. “Yeah, but like Sonia said, what if? I think it’s worth asking a few questions and finding out exactly what kind of relationship he and Dr. Wagner have.”
She turned a pencil around in her fingers for a while, then said, “Yeah, I guess. So where do we start, with Dr. Wagner?”
“Yes, chances are she knows nothing about the kid’s death. But all we want from her is whether she was having an affair with Mitchell. If we catch her off guard she might just come clean. If we go to Mitchell first, he’ll alert her and she could clam up.”
She nodded and made to stand. “So all we are doing right now is establishing whether she and Brad Mitchell were having an affair.”
“Correct.”
“And then we take it from there?”
“Yup.”
“OK.”
She flicked through her phone book and after a moment made a call. She sat staring at me for a moment with the phone to her ear, biting her lip. Then:
“Yeah, good morning, this is Detective Carmen Dehan of the NYPD. We would like to meet with the director of the clinic… Dr. Margaret Wagner? OK, thanks.” She winked at me and mouthed putting me through to her secretary. “Yeah, good afternoon. Detective Carmen Dehan of the New York Police Department. We would like to meet with the director of the clinic… Dr. Margaret Wagner? Let me just make a note… Sooner the better. Sure, today, say in about three quarters of an hour…? OK, that’s great.” Another pause and Dehan pursed her lips and shook her head. “Oh, it’s just a routine inquiry. Thanks.”
She hung up and smiled. “See, Stone, I’m smart. Now her secretary thinks we had no idea the director was Dr. Wagner, and that our inquiry is about one of her patients. No red flags, no calls to Brad Mitchell.”
“You are subtle, Dehan. A subtle, devious, dangerous woman. Let’s go.”
We stepped out into the cold midmorning light. The sun was low in the south and casting long shadows across Fteley and Storey Avenue. We climbed into my ancient burgundy Jaguar Mark 2, and took the Bronx River Parkway north through endless green suburbs as far as Elmsford, and then turned east into White Plains. It was a half-hour drive and by the time we got there it was eleven AM, and the sun was approaching its zenith in a perfect blue sky. We skirted
the north of the town and took Hall Avenue into deep woodland. The Brad Mitchell clinic was about a mile in on the right-hand side behind large iron gates set in a fifteen-foot, redbrick wall.
The clinic was an old, Georgian manor at the end of a hundred-yard blacktop drive surrounded by sweeping lawns and woodlands. Dehan pushed her shades up onto her head and scrutinized the parkland around us.
“He’s not short of a few bucks, Stone. This is a few million in real estate.”
I nodded. “Two gets you twenty he has investors, which is further reason to avoid bad publicity.”
We pulled up in the parking lot at the front of the building and climbed the flight of six broad granite steps to the main doors. Inside there was the kind of hush you only get with high ceilings and marble floors, where even the echoes seem distant. There was a small, discreet reception desk on the left as we went in. The girl sitting behind it smiled at us with polite indifference and asked Dehan how she could help her.
“We’re here to see Dr. Wagner.” Dehan showed her her badge and I showed her mine. “Detectives Carmen Dehan and John Stone.”
She picked up a phone on her solid oak desk and after a second said, “Detectives Dehan and Stone to see Dr. Wagner…mm-hmm.” She hung up and pointed to a broad, marble staircase that rose along the back wall of the entrance hall. “Next floor, turn right at the top of the stairs and Dr. Wagner’s office is at the end on the right.”
Dehan smiled at her with dead eyes. “If I was a celebrity with a habit, would you take me there yourself?”
The receptionist didn’t lose her smile or her composure. She tilted her head on one side and said, “No, Dr. Wagner would come down to meet you.”
“That’s what I thought.”
We turned and climbed the stairs, and followed her directions to the end of a long corridor carpeted in red, with prints on the walls depicting English hunt scenes and ships in full sail on the high seas. The door there was open and through it we found an office paneled in wood, with a desk and a couple of filing cabinets. Behind the desk was a woman in her fifties with gunmetal hair and pale blue eyes that could kill a warm feeling at three hundred paces without blinking. She didn’t say hello, she said, “May I see your identification, please?”
We showed her our badges, which she inspected briefly before adding, “Dr. Wagner can spare you ten minutes. Please keep the interview as brief as possible.”
Neither of us answered, so she stood, moved to the door that was behind her desk and to the right, knocked and leaned in.
“The detectives from New York, Dr. Wagner…”
She paused a moment, listening, then stood back and held the door open for us. As we filed past she repeated, under her breath, “Please, keep it brief.”
Dehan scowled at her. “Go file something, sister.”
Dr. Wagner was standing behind her desk. Your first impression when you looked at her was that you were looking at a very attractive woman. She was tall, and elegant in her movements. She had an abundance of well-cut blonde hair, deep, warm brown eyes and skin that looked naturally youthful. Then you noticed that there were things that were wrong. She was just a bit too tall, her body was bony and angular and her mouth was too wide. Then you looked again and realized it didn’t matter, because in her it all came together and worked. I decided she was a woman a lot of men would find it easy to have an affair with.
I heard the door close behind me and moved across the room. I showed her my badge.
“Dr. Wagner, I am Detective John Stone from the New York Police Department, and this is my partner, Detective Carmen Dehan.”
She smiled at Dehan and said, “Congratulations. Female detectives are still a minority. How can I help you? Please, sit down.”
This last was also addressed to Dehan. The three of us sat and I waited for Dehan to speak. Wagner spoke first.
“If it’s one of our patients you are interested in, I’m afraid I will need a court order. We don’t want to be obstructive, and we will give the broadest interpretation to any court order you have, but our patients pay a great deal for our therapies…”
Dehan was shaking her head. “We are not here about any of your patients, Dr. Wagner. We are actually here about your relationship with Dr. Brad Mitchell.”
She froze. Her eyebrows rose suddenly and her pale cheeks flushed pink.
“My…” She leaned forward slightly. “My what?”
Neither of us answered her. We just watched her, trying to read the signs. She laughed and shook her head. “My relationship with Dr. Mitchell is purely professional.”
Dehan asked, “How long have you known each other?”
“I don’t know!” She gazed up and to the left, shaking her head. “Ten, eleven years? Perhaps a little more. Do you mind telling me what this is about?”
Dehan shook her head. “Not at all. How did you meet? Was it at the university?”
She frowned. “Yes. We were in the same department. We were colleagues.”
Dehan spread her hands, cocked her head on one side. “A little more than colleagues.”
“What do you mean? No, absolutely not! We were colleagues!”
Dehan gestured at the desk with both hands. “He appointed you as the director of his clinic. That is more than just colleagues.”
Now she was frowning hard and her cheeks had deepened to red.
“I don’t know what you’re driving at, Detective, but there was absolutely no impropriety in my appointment to this position. I worked damn hard for it, and I earned it!”
“I have no doubt about that, Dr. Wagner. I just wanted to make the point that your relationship was not one of mere colleagues. Now that’s right, isn’t it, Doctor? You were not merely colleagues, were you?”
Dr. Wagner took a deep breath and let it out slow.
“All right, Detective, we were not merely colleagues. We were, and are, also good friends. We tend to play down our friendship because people do love to gossip and spread rumors. But obviously, we planned the clinic from scratch together and eventually he put up the money and I run the place. We are not quite partners, but that is on the cards. It is impossible to make that kind of commitment together without becoming close friends…”
Dehan was nodding. When Dr. Wagner trailed off, Dehan spoke patiently, almost kindly. “I had got about that far by myself, Doctor. What I am asking you is how close that friendship is.”
She hesitated, looked at her desk for a while and then into Dehan’s eyes. There was defiance there. “And I am going to ask you again, Detective, what is this about?”
Dehan was about to answer, but I cut in.
“It’s about your affair with Dr. Mitchell. We need to know when it started, Dr. Wagner.”
Her eyes went wide and her jaw sagged slightly. Her voice, when she answered, was slightly shrill.
“I don’t know where to begin! I mean… Quite aside from the fact that I am not having an affair with Brad, I resent your nosing around in my personal affairs! And since when is it the business of the police whether consenting adults have affairs or not?”
I didn’t pause or hesitate. “Since those affairs might provide the motive for murder, Dr. Wagner.”
“…Murder?”
“Yes. This is a murder inquiry, Dr. Wagner. Now, would you please answer the question? When did your affair with Dr. Mitchell begin?”
Three
She sat for a long moment, staring at nothing a couple of inches above her desk. Eventually she frowned at her own thoughts and turned her gaze to me.
“Am I a suspect? I have a right to know. And what about Brad? Is he a suspect?”
Dehan glanced at me. Her face said my play hadn’t worked out. I disagreed, but shook my head at Dr. Wagner.
“You’re not a suspect, Dr. Wagner. Right now we have no real suspects. What we are trying to do is establish the background against which the crime was committed.” I offered her a smile which was not unkind and added, “You have already admitted with your si
lence that you did have an affair with Dr. Mitchell. If you hadn’t, you’d have had no problem telling us so, very firmly, I would imagine. What we need to know is when it started and, if it finished, when?”
She was not happy. “If I am not a suspect, I am not under arrest…”
I knew where she was going, and so did Dehan. She beat me to the punch and cut her off.
“June, 2014, were you together?”
Her face clamped up, but her eyes spoke volumes. Then her mouth joined in. “I think I’d like you to leave now.”
I nodded once, looking out of her window at the cold, green landscape, silent and still through triple glazing. “Sure,” I said, and shifted my gaze to meet her eyes. “But please bear in mind, Dr. Wagner, that if we decide you are a material witness, or even a suspect, we can have you picked up and taken into custody with a whole fleet of patrol cars, all with flashing lights and wailing sirens. If you were not involved in the murder, but you have relevant information, it is always in your interest to cooperate with us.”
Her voice was almost a whisper. “What murder?”
“Were you lovers in June 2014?”
She didn’t answer. I stood and took a card from my wallet and handed it to her. “Call me or Detective Dehan at these numbers, any time, day or night. If we’re not at the precinct they’ll forward the call.”
Dehan pulled the door open. She paused as I went through it and turned back toward Dr. Wagner. “The victims were children, Doctor. Think about it.”
We made our way down the marble stairs among cold echoes and crossed the gloomy hall, out into the bright, crisp noonday sun. In the car, we cut through White Plains and took Bloomingdale Road south until it became Mamaroneck Avenue. We followed that till we came to Lombardo’s on the left. There I did a U-turn and pulled into the large parking lot.