by Blake Banner
“Sure, good. I also want every other form of communication in the house bagged and gone over with a fine-toothed comb: tablet, laptop, desktop, whatever else you can find. I want to know every message she sent and received over the last four to six weeks: Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, email—everything. I want to know who was talking to her, and I want to know what they said to her a month ago.”
“OK, noted.” He smiled. “So unless there is something else, get off my crime scene and let me do just that.”
We thanked him and Dehan followed me downstairs. “Feel like sharing, sensei?”
“Sure.” We stepped out of the house onto the porch and followed the dogleg steel stairs down to the front yard and the sidewalk. There I leaned my ass on the hood of her small car and looked up at her. The wind dragged a few strands of her hair across her face. She brushed them away and looked astonishingly natural and beautiful doing it. For a moment I was distracted, wondering, not for the first or last time, how I had wound up so lucky. She said, “So?”
I smiled. “About a month ago, somebody said something to Sonia which made her so mad she decided she wanted to expose Dr. Brad Mitchell for, and I quote, ‘what he was.’”
“And what was, or is, he?”
“According to her, a man capable of killing his own daughter, as well as Leroy.”
“Huh…”
“And, curiously enough, this anger against Brad Mitchell started before she saw the article about the clinic and Dr. Wagner. In fact, it was that anger which prompted her to bring the article to me. I want to know what sparked that anger, and why she didn’t tell me about it when she came to see me. What she told me was that the Mitchells were good people, and Lee should have been grateful to them.”
She watched me for a moment, then said, “I know that look on your face, Stone. You think you already know what made her mad.”
“Do I? Maybe. I don’t know. Maybe not. I’m not sure.”
She pointed her finger at me. “You better not be cutting me out, Stone! It makes me really mad when you do that! I am not Dr. John Watson, here to make your brilliance shine brighter by contrast!”
I frowned and gave my head a small shake. “That is such a hurtful, unkind thing to say, Dehan.”
“Jackass!” She made for the driver’s side and opened the door, then pointed at me across the roof. “Sofa. Sofa tonight.”
“More unkindness.”
“Sofa!”
“You’ll come looking for me when the night grows cold and dark. You’ll see.”
“Sofa!”
And she slammed the door.
Twelve
The chief was watering the bonsai tree on his windowsill when we entered his office. Dehan stood staring at the tree as he gestured us to the chairs at his desk. I always had the feeling with Inspector John Newman that instead of talking to the senior officer at a police precinct in the Bronx, I was visiting a kindly but absentminded uncle somewhere in deepest New England.
Dehan pointed at the small tree. “Japanese, right?”
“Indeed, Carmen. In fact, the term ‘bon-sai’ is Japanese and means literally, ‘planted in a pot’ or ‘planted in a container.’ The art of cultivating bonsai trees originated in ancient China, but was brought to its highest artistic expression in Japan, among Zen Buddhists.”
“And the idea,” she said, “is to care for it and tend to it, so it doesn’t grow?”
He roared with laughter, sat in his chair chuckling and nodded. “Yes, that is precisely it, yes.” He chortled some more and, as we sat, asked, “So, what can I do for you?”
I told him, “We’ve just come from Sonia Laplant’s house, sir. Her nephew, you recall, was Leroy Brown, the boy adopted by the Mitchells…”
“Ah, yes, the Mitchell case you’re working on.”
“Well, Sonia Laplant has been murdered, sir. Three shots to the chest with a .22. There was no sign of forced entry or robbery, attempted or otherwise. So it seems reasonable to assume she allowed her killer in, he was known to her and was there for the purpose of killing her. That being the case, sir, it also seems reasonable to assume the murderer has something to do with our investigation.”
He made a noise that suggested he thought I was making assumptions I wasn’t entitled to. Dehan pushed up her sleeves and tied her hair behind her neck as she spoke.
“Here’s the thing, sir. Sonia was involved a long-term relationship with Dr. Garrido, the director of the Bronx Rehabilitation Clinic. He was the one who drew to her attention the article about Dr. Brad Mitchell opening a new clinic in White Plains, and installing Dr. Wagner as the director.”
He raised a hand. “As I recall, you told me the boy Leroy wanted to blackmail Dr. Mitchell because he believed he and Wagner were having an affair.”
Dehan answered. “That’s right. And Brad Mitchell told us that he had a feeling Sonia might have been involved in that blackmail attempt. Now, what’s interesting about her murder, sir, is that according to Dr. Garrido, Sonia had become obsessed with Brad Mitchell some three or four weeks before Garrido showed her the article about the clinic.”
“Obsessed in what way?”
“Angry, accusing him of killing the kids…”
I stepped in. “Something happened, about a month ago, that triggered this obsession in Sonia. According to Garrido, suddenly Brad Mitchell was all she could talk about. She apparently called him a skunk and stated that he had betrayed his wife. She said he deserved to be exposed for what he was, a man capable of killing his own daughter, as well as Lee. Now, I think it is very important that we find out what it was that triggered that obsession a month ago. Because it is that obsession that brings her to the article—Garrido only showed it to her because she was talking about him so much—and with the article, to me. And just twenty-four hours after she comes to me with that article, she is murdered.”
He made a deep, rumbling, hmmm… sound. Then added, “Something tells me you are going to ask me to authorize something controversial.”
“I am going to go through all her emails and every other form of communication she had that I can lay my hands on, focusing on the period four to five weeks ago.”
“Good.”
“I also plan to go through her financials. I don’t know exactly why, but I need to know what she was doing and what was going on a month ago. Did she go somewhere, did she have an extra large expense or receipt…?” I shrugged. “Something happened that turned her against Dr. Brad Mitchell. We don’t know what. But I have a pretty strong hunch we’ll find out from her communications and her bank account.”
He arched an eyebrow at me and rumbled. “I suppose you’re right. But you are of course at liberty to do both those things. What do you want from me?”
“I want to look at Dr. Brad Mitchell’s communications and his financials too, and his wife’s.”
“Good heavens, John! On what grounds? They are the victims, for heaven’s sake.”
“Are they? There is one pretty persuasive theory—held by Sonia Laplant, incidentally—that says Leroy was blackmailing Brad Mitchell, and Brad Mitchell killed him for it.”
He frowned a frown that was almost a scowl. The chief didn’t like ideas that involved kindly middle-class fathers killing adopted children.
“You consider that theory is persuasive?”
“I do when it turns out that Leroy photographed Brad Mitchell and Dr. Wagner together, albeit simply chatting together, and it later turns out that they were, in fact, having an affair, and she went on to become the director of his multi-million-dollar clinic in White Plains.”
Dehan leaned forward with her elbows on her knees. “Sir, there were five people in that house when those kids were killed. The logic is irresistible: Either a sixth person was there and the Mitchells are protecting them, which makes practically no sense at all, or a sixth person arrived unnoticed and killed them, which is so difficult as to be virtually impossible, or one or both of the Mitchells killed those kids. There is no ot
her possible explanation.”
He went into a kind of dark sulk and muttered, “Dear Lord!” Then he scowled at me like it was my fault people did that kind of thing. “Impossible for a sixth person to arrive? Are you sure? Why?”
“Yes sir, because they would be seen either by neighbors or by the Mitchells. We have been over it from every angle. The blackmail angle is just about all we have, and the only thing that makes logical sense. It has to be explored and, hopefully, eliminated.” I paused, thinking, and added, “Though that will leave us with only very bizarre options indeed.”
He sighed. “I’ll see what I can do, but let me warn you it is going to be very hard to find a judge sympathetic to what you want to do.”
Dehan shrugged. “Then maybe you can get them to explain to us who the sixth man was, and how he got in.”
She earned herself a rare scowl, he gave us the order and we left. We took Dehan’s Toyota and made the ten-minute drive down Soundview and Lacombe to the Mitchells’ house on Turneur Avenue. As we were arriving, Dehan said to me, “They won’t be there, and the nurse is going to insist on calling the Drs. Mitchell.”
I shrugged. “That’s OK. She’ll have to call them after we go in. Her option is that we call for backup and knock the door down. She won’t want to do that.”
We pulled up outside the white house, with it decorative white railings, and Dehan killed the engine and looked at me. “This kid is not going to talk to us.”
“Maybe. I’m not convinced. My gut tells me something inside him is desperate to tell somebody what he saw. But neither his mother nor his father wants to hear him, either because they are being overprotective, or because his silence suits them.”
She put her hand on the door handle and stopped.
“His father is a psychiatrist. He knows the kid needs to get this out of his system.”
My face told her I agreed. “Sure, so what is it that’s stopping him from doing what his son needs?” I shrugged. “Go figure.”
We climbed out of the small car and made our way through the white, wrought-iron gate and up the stone steps to the front door. We rang and after a moment the door was opened by a young woman in a modern nurse’s uniform. She was tall and angular, with thick black hair that wasn’t so much curly as matted. She had a severe face and a green overall, and on her feet she had clogs.
She said, “Yes?” as though it were an advance rebuttal of anything we might have to say.
We showed her our badges. “I am Detective John Stone of the New York Police Department.” I thought I had better spell it out for her. “This is Detective Carmen Dehan. We have a court order…” I extracted it from my pocket and showed it to her. “It requires Marcus Mitchell’s parents and/or guardians to grant us access to him, to attempt to speak to him.”
She took the order and read it, shaking her head. “I cannot do this. It’s impossible. Not without Dr. Mitchell’s consent.”
“On the contrary.” It was Dehan, picking the order out of the nurse’s hands with her fingers. “You can and must. This is an order of the court and it applies to you, with or without Dr. Mitchell’s consent. Otherwise, in ten minutes’ time, you will have this place crawling with cops carrying battering rams. Now, I suggest you show us the way to Marcus’s room, and then you telephone whichever Dr. Mitchell it is you need to get consent from.”
I smiled and pushed past her. Dehan followed and closed the door. The nurse just stood and stared at us.
I offered her what you might call a thin smile. “What’s your name?”
“Thelma.”
“Well, Thelma, you had better show me the way to Marcus’s room, or I will prosecute you for contempt of court and obstructing a homicide investigation. Snap out of it, nurse.”
She gave a small gasp and hurried across the broad living room toward the stairs. We followed her stumping clogs up to a wide landing, which we crossed to a white door. Here she paused and stared at us. There was a kind of horror in her eyes.
“He has not spoken for six years. He is deeply traumatized. He does not move or react or respond. Please, be gentle with him. What he saw…” She shook her head, closed her eyes and opened the door.
The room was bright. Double windows stood open onto the rear lawn and lace curtains wafted gently in the cold breeze. Angles of light lay across a bright, patchwork quilt composed of luminous orange, red and yellow squares. The room was large, broad and spacious. There was an armchair in a far corner, a pine chest of drawers and a freestanding oak wardrobe.
Marcus was lying in the bed. I had always imagined him as a child, but he was now about seventeen. He would have been a handsome young man, with a sensitive, intelligent face, had he not been so thin and drawn. The quilt was pulled up to his chest. His hair was platinum, his skin very white and his eyes very blue. He didn’t look at us. He seemed to gaze in the direction of the wardrobe, but without seeing it.
Dehan turned to the nurse.
“Thelma, we will be very gentle with Marcus. There is no need for you to worry or even to be here. In fact, you had better go and telephone the Doctors Mitchell. They’ll want to be here.” She paused a moment then continued and asked the question I had been turning over in my own mind. “Thelma, before you go, when you said you could not let us see Marcus without Dr. Mitchell’s consent, which doctor were you referring to, Brad or Emma?”
Nurse Thelma lifted her chin. “Dr. Emma Mitchell. She is the Mama, the one who cares for her boy. Dr. Brad Mitchell has nothing to do with him.”
Dehan nodded. “Yeah, that’s what I figured. OK, you can run along now, and call the doctors.”
The nurse left and Dehan closed the door. Under the window there was a straight-backed chair. I went, pulled it over beside the bed and sat. Dehan dragged over the armchair on the other side and placed herself close beside him, directly in his line of vision.
I said, “Hello, Marcus, my name is John, and that lady over there is Carmen. We are police officers, and we have some news for you.”
I paused a moment to allow those facts to sink in. I noticed Dehan looking at me curiously.
“We are here to find out who killed your sister, Lea.”
It was almost imperceptible, but there was a hardening of his face, like all the muscles had contracted at the same time. I had been wondering how long it had been since anybody had spoken to him about his sister. I figured it had been a long time, years maybe, and what I’d said had been a shock. I went on.
“It has been a long time now, hasn’t it? Six years, but it’s a crime that just won’t go away, right? It’s always down there, in the shed, with your sister, and Lee, and you. Alone.”
I waited. I counted fifteen slow seconds in my mind and saw the smallest flicker in his eyes as he focused on Dehan. She smiled.
“You were alone,” I said. “The three of you. It’s important that there are no mistakes. You were alone. And then there was somebody there, and Lea was screaming. Lea was screaming a lot.” I saw the bright reflection of tears in his eyes and felt a hot jolt of excitement in my gut. I said, quietly, “And you can remember how you felt in that moment.”
The tears spilled down his cheeks. Dehan glanced at me. His bottom lip curled in and his face creased up. He made an agonizing, guttural sound and Dehan was on her feet. She knelt by his side, holding his hand and stroking his face. His eyes found hers and held them as he wept. She whispered to him, “What happened, Marcus? What happened?”
He screwed up his eyes and sobbed. Dehan stroked his hair and he clung to her arm, curling up against the pain in his gut and in his heart. I rose and walked around to the far side of the bed, hunkered down beside him and Dehan. She gave me a look that said, Don’t talk.
Slowly his sobs settled down and I spoke again.
“Marcus, I know how much this is hurting you. I know it hurts you every day, and you don’t want to talk, and you don’t want to hear. But I also know that somewhere deep inside you, you need to talk. You need somebody to hear abou
t all the pain you felt when you saw what happened to Lea. I know that you need somebody to share and understand what you are feeling.”
He was still clinging hard to Dehan’s arm, and again the tears spilled from his eyes as he squeezed them tight.
“That’s why Carmen and I are here. We have come to hear your story, Marcus.”
Now his sobs were convulsive, but silent. A couple of times they subsided, but then welled up again and he curled on his belly, like there was a vacuum there, of pain, that was sucking him in.
After about five minutes his breathing slowed and he opened his eyes. He still had a hold of Dehan’s arm. His sight drifted from an empty place in space, to focus on Dehan’s eyes, and then on me.
“John…” It was barely a whisper. I smiled at him and his face creased into something like an expression, an echo of a smile remembered from six years before.
“Dad,” he said, and the smile faded from his face. “Dad is coming.”
Dehan frowned, shot me a look and looked back at Marcus. She stroked his hair and asked, “Your dad is coming?”
His eyes were starting to glaze and the lids were drooping. “Dad,” he said again. “Dad is coming,” and his eyes closed him into sleep.
We sat like that for a while, Dehan and I staring at each other, thinking in silence. Outside the room we heard the tramp of feet coming up the stairs. The door opened and Brad Mitchell stepped in. He stared for a long moment at his son, who was still clinging to Dehan’s arm. He stared at her a moment and then stared at me.
His voice was a rasp. “What the hell do you think you are you doing?”
I stood. “Our jobs, Dr. Mitchell. Maybe it’s time you started thinking about doing yours.”
His face flushed with anger. “Why, you…! How dare you…!”
“I’m not talking about your job at the university, Dr. Mitchell. I’m talking about your job here, at home, with your son, as his father. He still calls you dad. Did you know that?”
“What? He spoke…? What the hell has been going on here?”