by Blake Banner
“Pizza and lamb chops,” I said to Dehan, “and cold beer.”
She shook her head. “No, oysters, pizza, lamb chops and cold beer.”
“You’re right.” I nodded and we climbed out of the ancient growler.
We found a booth and gave our order. Dehan drummed her fingers on the table and drew breath. I said, “It’s too soon to start formulating theories, Dehan.”
“I say to you what Nero Wolfe would say to you.”
“And what would that be?”
“Phooey!”
I laughed. “Fine, let’s hear it. And then you can tell me what it’s based on.”
The beers arrived and she took a pull, then wiped the foam from her mouth with the back of her hand.
“You told Wagner she had pretty much confessed to having an affair with Mitchell when she refused to answer…”
“That was a bluff, Dehan, and has no probative value at all…”
“Shut up and listen, Stone. Sure, it has no probative value in court, but we’re not in court. It’s just you and me, nosing around. We both know if she hadn’t been having an affair she would have told us so right away.” She made a scandalized face. “What, me? And Brad? Are you out of your minds?”
I smiled. “Fine. I’ll shut up.”
“Well, the same applies to the date. When we asked her if they were involved in June 2014, if they hadn’t been she would have taken that way out and told us no way.”
“Why?”
“Because clearly the date tied their affair to the murder in some way, might even make one of them a suspect. If the date had been wrong she would have seized on that with both hands. Instead, she freaked out. She clammed up and told us to leave. That means one thing and one thing only, Stone. She was with him at that time.”
“Maybe.”
“Phooey, sir!”
“I think I preferred it when you read Mickey Spillane.”
“They had an affair and they were involved in June 2014, when those kids were killed. That’s what we came here to find out, and that’s what we found out. Now I am going to ask you the kind of question you ask: what was it about their being involved at that time that made us want to know?”
“I think I might have phrased it more tersely, with more brevity.”
“Whatever. So what was it about their having an affair at that time that was important to us? Answer: if they were having an affair at that time it increased the possibility that Brad might have reacted to Leroy’s blackmail by killing him. Am I wrong?”
“No.”
“So?”
“So we continue with the investigation, for now, but I am still finding it very hard to believe that Mitchell would kill his own daughter. Maybe when we meet him I’ll change my mind. But right now it does not fit his profile at all. A liberal academic who adopts an orphan because he reads about him in the papers and feels compassion for him, is not the obvious choice for killing his five-year-old daughter to cover up the murder of that same adopted orphan.” She grunted and I went on. “Besides, Sunday midmorning, with all the family there, is not the ideal time. Surely he could have chosen a better opportunity.”
She grunted again. A moment later the waitress arrived with the oysters. She left and we sat in relative silence, making only those noises you make when you’re eating oysters. When Dehan had devoured the last of those edible, bivalve mollusks, and I had drawn off two-thirds of my beer, I smacked my lips and said, “There is something else.”
She picked up a paper napkin and wiped her mouth. “What?”
“Leah, Mitchell’s daughter, was killed with a knife.”
“Uh-huh.”
“So was Leroy.”
“OK…”
“And so were Leroy’s mother and father.”
She frowned hard at me. “You are reaching, Stone.”
I screwed up my napkin and dropped it by my plate. “In 2019, six thousand, three hundred and sixty-eight people were murdered in the United States using handguns. Only one thousand, four hundred and seventy-six were murdered using knives. That one small boy should be involved in four murders, each one a stabbing, is a statistical aberration, and therefore significant. It means something.”
“It’s a fluke, Stone. The first was a domestic incident and the choice of a kitchen knife was opportunistic. It was what was available. And in the murder of Lea and Leroy…” She shrugged and watched the waitress take away the empty plates and deliver the pizza and a dish of lamb chops. When she’d gone Dehan said, “Either the murders were committed by Mitchell or they weren’t. If he did, we have to assume that he was under an intolerable amount of pressure caused by the threat of blackmail from Leroy that was going to bring down not only his family, but also his career and the clinic he was planning to establish. Now, think about it, Stone. What are the chances of a New York, liberal academic having a gun in his house—or anywhere else for that matter?”
“Granted.”
“You want to hear what my gut is saying?”
“Aside from feed me more pizza?”
She stuffed a slice in her mouth and spoke around it.
“I think the killing of Leroy and Lea was also opportunistic. We don’t know what went down that day. We only know what the Mitchells told the investigating detectives. But my gut tells me that, if Mitchell killed those kids, it was a spur of the moment decision in which he seized an opportunity and struck.”
I shrugged. “It’s very possible. But it’s only speculation.”
She stared at me a moment, chewing, then said, “Wagner will have telephoned Mitchell by now and he’ll be expecting us. We need to go see him while he is still rattled, before he has time to agree on a story with her.”
I picked up a lamp chop and nodded. “That kind of thing takes a lot of time and thought and discussion. There is always something you overlook or forget about. We’ll go see him after lunch.”
She wiped her fingers on her jeans and reached for her cell. “I’ll call him now and tell him we’re on our way, rattle him a little more.”
She held the cell to her ear for a moment, sucking her teeth and staring at me. Then:
“Yeah, this is Detective Carmen Dehan of the NYPD, I need to talk to Dr. Brad Mitchell.” She waited a moment, watching me. “Putting me through to his secretary.” I nodded once, upward. She averted her eyes and started talking. “Yeah, good afternoon. This is Detective Carmen Dehan of the NYPD. I need to speak with Dr. Brad Mitchell… Oh, he’s teaching a seminar right now? How long will he be?” She grinned at me and winked. “You figure he’ll be another hour? So he’s been in there for an hour already… OK, well that’s fine. Please let him know that we’ll be there in an hour,” she looked at her watch, “at one thirty, and we really need to talk to him. It’s important.”
She hung up. We finished the chops and the pizza, drained our beers and left.
An hour later I found a parking space outside the Psychology Building of the University of New York at Number Six, Washington Place. It was right next to the Center for Neural Science at Number Four. The two departments were in the same classic Gotham City style, with black facades at street level that somehow managed to suggest the deep unconscious, between massive, ochre columns in a neo Greco-Roman style that added to the awe factor.
We found Mitchell’s office on the ninth floor. He had the corner overlooking Washington Place and Mercer Street. It was large and classical in style, with a lot of mahogany and oak, tall bookcases with well-thumbed hardbacks and paperbacks overflowing the shelves. The floor was dark green wall-to-wall carpet, and his desk and chair were oak and green leather.
Mitchell was tall and rangy, slim, with thick silver hair. He was standing beside his desk, in a dark blue suit, looking at us fixedly with his cell to his ear. He said, “OK, they’re here. I’ll get back to you.”
He hung up, laid his cell on the desk and spoke as he removed his jacket and hung it on the back of his chair, like he was preparing for a fight.
“So, this is the
new, human face of the New York Police Department. First you mount an incompetent investigation into my children’s death, then you neglect it for six years and finally, lacking any other suspects, you try to pin it on the father. That’s good, you know?” He pulled out the chair and lowered himself into it. “Because I haven’t been through enough in the last six years. I need to suffer a bit more.” He paused, scowled at us and asked, “What the hell do you want?”
I approached and showed him my badge. “Detective John Stone, of the New York Police Department. This is my partner, Detective Dehan. Dr. Mitchell, do you mind if we sit down for ten minutes? We’ll make this as brief as is possible.”
He sighed and gestured at the two chairs across his desk. We sat and Dehan spoke first.
“Was that Dr. Wagner on the phone, Dr. Mitchell?”
He focused his scowl on her. “You know damn well it was. That’s why you went to see her first, in the hopes of scaring me and unsettling me.”
He loosened his tie.
I said: “Dr. Mitchell, I head up a cold case unit at the 43rd Precinct. The first investigation ground to a halt through a total lack of evidence. But we have received new evidence and we are bound to look into it.”
His face flushed and there was real anger in his eyes. “New evidence? Just what exactly do you call evidence in the New York Police Department? Rumors? Malicious gossip?”
I offered him a rueful smile. “Anything we can get our hands on, sir. It’s possible we are clutching at straws, Dr. Mitchell. But in investigating the murder of two children, I would rather clutch at straws than ignore a possible lead so as not to offend somebody.”
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. After a moment he opened them again.
“I am not having an affair with Dr. Wagner, and I have never had an affair with Dr. Wagner. Does that answer your question? And please, before you go blundering about in your so-called investigation, bear in mind the enormous damage you could do to my career, Dr. Wagner’s career and my family. I think, Detectives, that we have been through enough in recent years, without this ham-fisted attempt to pin my daughter’s murder on me.”
Dehan raised an eyebrow. “What about Leroy?”
He frowned at her for a moment like he didn’t understand what she was saying. “You mean Lee. You can’t be so naïve as to think that Lee’s death devastated me as much as my daughter’s. I have been a psychiatrist for thirty years, and I have been in analysis for every one of those years. I am not going to sit here and lie about the most central, important things in my life. I was learning to love Lee. I certainly cared about him and his welfare. But we all knew, from the very start, that it was not going to be easy. He was a troubled and conflicted boy and in the last year he was with us he made it hard to like him. Even so, Emma and I stayed the course and supported each other, and we were learning to love him.”
He shook his head and tears welled in his eyes, “But Lea… Not a day goes by that my heart does not break when I remember her. I long for her and weep for her. I didn’t need to learn to love her. I loved her from before she was born. It’s neurology, hormones, brain chemistry, whatever you like. That’s how human beings work. It doesn’t change the fact that she was my baby girl, I love her still and I will love her to the day I die.”
It looked sincere, but after thirty years studying the human mind, and how emotions work, I was prepared to hedge my bets.
“Were you aware, Dr. Mitchell, that Lee had told his aunt, Sonia, that he believed you were having an affair with Dr. Wagner, that he had followed you to the university and taken photographs of you?”
“Yes.” He gave a single nod. “I was aware of that.”
“Were you aware that it was his intention to blackmail you with that information?”
“He told me that, yes. He came to my den in the house, knocked on my door and came in. He showed me the photographs he had and told me he wanted a hundred bucks a week to keep silent about it. Otherwise he would tell my wife.”
The room was very quiet for a moment. Then Dehan asked, “Do you not agree, Dr. Mitchell, that what he did provided you with a very powerful motive for murder?”
His face was like granite. He held her eye for a long moment, then said, “Yes, I do. I’d say it provides a very powerful motive for murder indeed.”
Four
“I’ll tell you.” He laid both of his large hands on the edge of his desk and examined them. “I’ll tell you what I did. He sat there, across from me, with an impudent sneer on his face, and what I wanted to do was what my father would have done to me, if I had dared speak to him the way Lee spoke to me. What I wanted to do was lay him across my knee and beat him soundly with my slipper.”
He paused, and there was still anger in his eyes. “But what I did, what I did, Detectives, was to laugh in his face and call my wife. When she arrived I showed her the photographs and told her what Lee had said. She laughed too, and we tried to have a dialogue with him, to make him understand that he did not need to blackmail love out of us. We were ready to love him anyway. He ran out of my study in a tantrum and slammed his way up the stairs and into his room.”
“Will your wife corroborate that?”
He picked up his phone and dialed, then held it out to me across his desk. “Ask her yourself.”
I heard it ring a couple of times and then a cultured, female voice came on the line. It spoke with warmth.
“Hello, darling. What are you doing calling me at this time?”
“Dr. Mitchell, this is not your husband. He has given me his phone to speak to you.”
“Who is this? Is Brad all right?”
I put it on speaker. “Yes, Dr. Mitchell, he is fine. This is Detective John Stone, of the New York Police Department. I run a cold cases unit at the 43rd Precinct. We are talking to your husband about the murders of Lea and Lee. I had a question for him but he felt it was more appropriate that you answer it.”
“What question?”
“Dr. Mitchell, do you recall a time when Lee tried to blackmail your husband?”
She was quiet for a moment, then, “Why, yes, but it was an absurd, childish thing. I believe he wanted something like fifty dollars a month, or a hundred. We all laughed at it.”
“Could you tell me what happened?”
“Happened? Well, nothing happened. Brad called me to his den, where he was sitting with Lee. I remember Brad was laughing his head off and Lee was looking very offended.” She started to laugh at the memory. “Brad showed me a couple of pictures on Lee’s phone. They were of him talking to one of his colleagues at the university. Dr. Margaret Wagner. She now runs his clinic for him in White Plains. He told me that Lee wanted to blackmail him and we laughed about it. Lee was very offended and ran off. Poor boy. He was having a lot of trouble adjusting to a new way of life. Do I understand you have reopened the investigation?”
“Yes, Dr. Mitchell. Somebody has come forward with new evidence, but please don’t get your hopes up. The evidence is pretty thin. We’ll be in touch.”
I handed back the phone. “I’m sorry to have caused you distress, Dr. Mitchell. If something like this turns up, we have to look into it.”
He nodded but didn’t say anything. I glanced at Dehan. She shook her head and we stood. “Thank you for answering our questions. If anything comes up, we’ll be in touch.”
“You’re going to keep investigating? The other detective gave up almost immediately.”
“I can’t promise anything, but we’ll have a look at it. Sometimes a fresh set of eyes sees things that weren’t apparent before.”
He lowered his eyes and bit his lip. “Sometimes I have wondered…”
“What?”
“That blackmail business. I have wondered sometimes whether he was not alone in that. Perhaps I should not have laughed. Perhaps I should have taken it more seriously. Perhaps there was somebody else behind it. And when it didn’t work out…”
Dehan was frowning. “Have you anyone in mind?�
��
He heaved a big sigh. “It is so hard to be sure what my motivation is. Am I projecting? Am I jealous of Sonia, because he was close to her and rejected my paternal love? He was in touch with Sonia, a lot, you see? And I know he told her about his blackmail idea…” He looked at me hopelessly and spread his hands. “I don’t know. I don’t know if I have someone in mind or not.”
“We’ll look into it. We’ll be in touch if anything comes up.” At the door, with my hand on the handle, I stopped and turned back. “Dr. Mitchell, would you have any objection to our visiting the scene later?”
“I confess I can’t see much point, but if you think it will help…” He shrugged.
When we got down to the street again, a breeze like a cold, steel blade was moving down Washington Place, stabbing people in the back, creeping through the folds in their clothes, and seeping in among their ankles to chill their blood. Dehan shuddered as she stepped out onto the sidewalk. She hunched her shoulders and moved toward the car with her hands in her pockets. I felt the cold creep into my shoulders and make my skin crawl, shoved my hands in my pockets and jerked my head toward Washington Park. “Let’s walk.”
“Why? What’s wrong with driving?”
“Come on, walking helps me think.”
She fell in beside me, shaking her head. “You know it’s cold, right?”
“Is he a good actor, or is he telling the truth?”
She shrugged with one shoulder. “He was pretty convincing.”
“He has been in analysis for thirty years. Method acting and psychoanalysis are not a million miles apart from each other. They both involve exploring deep unconscious emotions, and tapping into them to understand them. A man who has spent thirty years studying his own unconscious emotions, and analyzing them, could conceivably give a very convincing performance by evoking the emotions he wanted to portray.”
She watched her feet a moment as she walked, and seemed to recite, “Indignation, grief, regret, confusion…” She paused. “When he called his wife, that could not have been rehearsed.”
“I agree.”