Same Difference, page 20
There was no sound from behind the door. Eliza surely wasn’t being tortured, even with a gag in her mouth. No movement. It was hard to know if getting inside was even worthwhile; Merchant was pretty clearly not home.
But seeing where he lived could be instructional if I could get in without causing too much damage. Climbing the house was pretty much out of the question; I’d be seen in this neighborhood, which was far too well lit and too well populated. The door was the issue and I’d have to deal with it.
I’ve seen people pick locks and a guest lecturer in one of my criminal justice classes in college (a former burglar) had once attempted to show me how, but you need equipment, and practice would probably be a good thing; I had neither.
But I had that whole superhuman strength thing going. And Merchant, the ever-vigilant NYPD detective, appeared to have only one lock on his door. If Eliza was inside it would be worth doing a little damage. If not, this was payback for shadowing me all over New York City. There was no downside, as long as I didn’t get caught.
Someone as strong as I am – a group that includes all of two people on Earth – doesn’t need to overwhelm a lock to break it. A well-placed palm pushed slowly (that’s the key, pun unintended) against the lock will eventually force a deadbolt to smash its way through its mount and push out the wooden stud that keeps it secure. I had to exert a good amount of force for more than a minute, but the lock gave way with a minimum of sound and I was inside before one of the other tenants could look out of their apartments to see what the noise was about.
I had decided by now that Merchant was holding Eliza, but not in this apartment because nobody could be that stupid. It was as standard a place as you’re likely to see, a garden apartment set-up in what had once been a private home, perhaps a three-family, cut up into six units. The front room, currently dark, housed a sofa that Merchant had probably inherited from his mother, over-upholstered and worn at the armrests, an armchair from the same collection, a coffee table of dark wood that held a TV remote and a package of Chinese takeout (which he’d eaten with a fork, sitting nearby) and a fairly small flat-screen TV on a table across the room, a decent distance from the sofa.
Between the coffee table and the TV, on the rug clearly bought on clearance, lay Detective Sergeant Louis Merchant, a bullet hole in his right temple. His eyes were open but they weren’t seeing anything. The gun that presumably had fired the bullet was still in his right hand, stretched out at a ninety-degree angle from his body. I could smell the gunpowder in the room. This hadn’t happened very long before.
I didn’t move my feet at all. I just reached into my pocket, pulled out my phone, and turned it on. The cops would be here soon enough.
THIRTY-ONE
I texted Mank and Ken to let them know what I’d found. There wasn’t going to be anything incriminating there. But the broken door and the smashed frame were not going to look great for me.
The first officers arrived ten minutes after I phoned the police. Two more came five minutes later once it had been phoned in that the victim was a New York cop. They were all professional and clearly over their heads; the first two were both young and might not have dealt with a gunshot death before. They immediately started treating it as a suicide.
I waited until Brooker showed up to express my opinion that it was anything else. The only facts I gave the two rookies (who probably weren’t rookies) was that I had indeed broken into the apartment because I thought Merchant might have been holding someone hostage, and that I had found him as they had without touching anything inside the apartment. All of that was true.
Brooker, whom I had not called, arrived about twenty minutes after the first two, when the Staten Island detective, a woman named Peabody, was already assessing the scene and holding off the EMTs who wanted to put Merchant in a body bag and drive him to his not-exactly-final destination. One of the two original cops left and I asked him to tell my cab driver that I wouldn’t be back. I figured Brooker was giving me a ride home.
‘So you found him like this? You didn’t move him in any way to see if he was alive?’ Brooker asked me.
‘Look at him,’ I said. ‘Do you think I believed he might be alive? I didn’t touch him because I knew you and Detective Peabody would want to see him exactly as I found him.’
‘You were right about that,’ Peabody said. She was using an iPad to take pictures of the body and the room. ‘The lights were out when you got here? Did you see him right away?’
‘It took a few seconds, but not too long,’ I told her.
‘That was after you broke in the door,’ Brooker noted. ‘Why did you do that?’
The night’s key question. ‘I had reason to believe that Merchant was holding Eliza Hennessey against her will,’ I said. ‘If that were the case, he wasn’t going to come to the door just because I knocked. I needed to see what the situation was, and if you want to charge me for discovering his body, I know a couple of lawyers.’ OK, one lawyer. I have malpractice insurance and he watches out for me. I don’t think we’ve ever met.
Brooker cocked an eyebrow. ‘What reason?’
Was he speaking in code? ‘Huh?’ I was at my most eloquent.
‘What reason did you have to think that Lou was holding Eliza hostage? He was a cop assigned to find a suspect in a murder. Why wouldn’t he just arrest her and bring her in?’
‘There was evidence that he had his own reasons to do that,’ I said. The last thing I wanted to do was tell a detective I thought his partner had committed a murder.
‘That doesn’t answer my question,’ Brooker said.
‘I know. Should I call my lawyer? Or is he monitoring every move my phone makes the way you are?’
Brooker held up his hands as if surrendering, in an effort to signal that somehow I was being unreasonable. Peabody, on the other hand, had a dead body in the room and wanted to ask me about it, which I thought was at least more immediate.
‘You said you didn’t touch him?’ she asked again.
‘Are you serious? Of course not.’
She walked to the spot where Merchant lay, probably minutes from being carted away once Peabody signed off on it. ‘So his right hand was like that when you came in.’
‘Yeah, and so was the left. I know enough not to touch a dead gunshot victim before the police show up.’
From behind me I heard Brooker mumble, ‘But not enough that you wouldn’t commit breaking and entering.’ He was making a list of things he could charge me with. This was going to be a long night.
Peabody either didn’t hear him or chose not to react and either way was fine with me. ‘That’s an odd angle for his arm to fall after he shot himself,’ she said. ‘It’s as if he flung his hand away from his body after he was dead.’
‘That’s because he didn’t shoot himself,’ I said. It seemed obvious enough. ‘Somebody he knew came in and killed him. I bet if you look in his pockets you won’t find his key to the apartment. The killer took it and locked the door.’
Brooker nodded. ‘That’s what I thought when I first saw him,’ he said. ‘I mean, Lou just wasn’t the type and was showing no signs of depression. He just leased a new car.’
Peabody looked at the remaining uniform with the iPad. ‘You got all the pictures?’ she asked. The kid nodded and she looked at the EMT. ‘OK. You can take him.’ So they started getting Merchant into the body bag.
‘You and I are going to be dickering around about jurisdiction, but your partner died in my precinct,’ Peabody told Brooker. ‘Whatever case you were working doesn’t change that.’
He did his ‘surrender’ motion again. ‘You’ll get no argument from me, but the murder he and I were investigating happened in the Bronx because a drug dealer thought another drug dealer owed him money.’
Peabody nodded. ‘Your case,’ she said.
There was probably another hour of them asking me why I broke the lock and did I touch the body and, strikingly, my answers remained the same. Brooker really wanted to know why I thought Merchant was holding Eliza and I really wanted to know where Eliza was. The difference was that I knew the answer to the question he kept asking me, and I had no idea what he knew about the one I was asking him. Cops can be infuriating.
He looked at me when the questioning was through and he’d made sure Peabody didn’t need anything else from me. ‘Come on,’ Brooker said. ‘You can have about forty minutes by my estimate to convince me that I shouldn’t book you for harboring a fugitive, illegal entry, breaking and entering, resisting arrest and withholding evidence.’
‘A couple of those are the same thing,’ I told him.
‘Get in the car.’
So we went outside and got into the car. Brooker drove, what with it being his car and all (and the fact that I haven’t driven in five years because I live in Manhattan). We stayed silent until it became obvious he was heading toward the Verrazzano Bridge to get into Brooklyn and then to the lower end of the island. It was a choice, and not a terribly odd one.
‘I’m sorry about your partner,’ I said finally.
‘We weren’t close.’ Brooker was staring straight ahead even more than most people do when they drive. ‘I didn’t dislike the guy or anything, but he was old school, and I’m …’
‘New school?’ I said.
‘Let’s just say “school.” Anyway, our styles weren’t the same. He’d just plow ahead without telling me sometimes. Like with your Eliza. How about you tell me where she is?’
Talking to men is like talking to subway trains. They don’t listen and the only sounds you get back are annoying. ‘I have no idea where she is. That’s why I went to see Merchant, because I thought Eliza was with him. I’ve told you this. More than once.’
Brooker was staying right at the speed limit, I guess so a cop wouldn’t pull him over? Maybe he was just one of those crazy law-abiding drivers. ‘The thing you haven’t told me is why you thought Lou was holding Eliza in his apartment.’
What the hell. ‘Because I thought Merchant was the one who killed Damien Van Dorn and he was taking Eliza to keep her quiet.’ Go ahead. Argue with me.
Not a blink, but he took a moment. ‘You thought Lou killed Van Dorn? Why?’
Since I was in an honest mood, figuring Brooker wasn’t going to arrest me any time soon, I didn’t hold back. ‘He was at every stop I made yesterday, no matter how careful I was not to transmit my location. He wasn’t everywhere Eliza stopped, just me. I figure he had something to do with the business Damien was doing on campus and it tied him to the scene where Damien died. And by the way, Damien wasn’t strangled.’
That got Brooker’s attention. I could tell because our speed went up by two miles per hour. ‘What do you mean, he wasn’t strangled? I read the ME’s report myself. Death by asphyxiation, caused by strangulation. You saw the extension cord around his neck.’
‘I saw pictures of strangulation victims when I was in college,’ I said. ‘Damien’s eyes were not extended. His hands weren’t clawing at the cord. His mouth wasn’t even open. He wasn’t gasping for breath when he died. Mostly he looked surprised.’
‘Then why did the medical examiner report that he’d been strangled?’ Brooker asked. We were reaching the entrance for the Verrazzano Bridge.
‘That’s another reason I think Merchant was involved,’ I told him. ‘Someone has some sway in the ME’s office.’
Brooker didn’t look shocked and he didn’t react in an amused or incredulous fashion. Mostly, he looked angry. ‘That stupid son of a bitch,’ he said. I’d like to point out here that he was simply expressing the view that someone was a male dog. Words have precise meanings that people almost never use.
Wait, I guessed right? How often does that happen? ‘Merchant knew someone he could use to fake an autopsy?’ I asked.
‘A preliminary report, for sure,’ Brooker answered after a moment. He was gripping the steering wheel very tightly as we got off the bridge and started the trek to the Brooklyn Bridge, I figured. ‘He had a cousin who worked in the ME’s office. It’s possible, but he never said anything to me.’
Then he drove past the entrance to the Brooklyn Bridge and started following signs to the Brooklyn–Queens Expressway and that’s when my stomach sank. ‘I live in lower Manhattan,’ I said.
‘Good for you. We’re going to my precinct in the Bronx so I can arrest you for the murder of Lou Merchant.’
THIRTY-TWO
There were a number of flaws in Brooker’s plan to arrest me:
1. It was Peabody’s case in Staten Island, not his in the Bronx.
2. I had absolutely no motive to kill Merchant.
3. There was no evidence that I’d done anything more than break in and discover the body. (OK, that wasn’t my strongest defense.)
4. No district attorney in the city would want any part of this arrest because see: 1–3.
5. He was being a jerk.
I texted Ken and Aunt Margie as soon as we were on the BQE, a road designed to slow down your progress as much as possible. They’d probably beat us to the station. Aunt Margie, who used to get cash contributions to our upbringing from our parents in the mail, would probably have saved some for bail money; now it would come in to use.
But once we arrived at the 44th Precinct on 169th Street in the Bronx, it was Mank who was waiting in the station before Brooker had even managed to present me for booking. And he looked pissed, for once at Brooker and not at me.
‘Detective Richard Mankiewicz,’ he said, showing Brooker his gold shield. It doesn’t impress other detectives that much but it is a legitimate means of identification. ‘I’m here to find out why you’re arresting one of my CIs?’ That’s ‘confidential informant’ for those not in the NYPD. He was saying I was a criminal that he used for inside information. Not exactly flattering, and I’d bring that up with him later.
‘I thought she was a PI,’ Brooker said. ‘What business do you have with her?’ He looked Mank up and down, which didn’t take very long. Maybe he thought they’d have a fist fight and wanted to assess his chances, which he probably thought were pretty good. He didn’t know Mank.
‘She is, but she’s helping me on a case,’ Mank answered. ‘And you still haven’t told me why you’re arresting her.’
‘She killed a cop. My partner.’ It was a miracle Brooker didn’t wipe a tear from his eye for effect.
Mank looked at Brooker, then at me, then at Brooker again. ‘Seriously?’
‘Yeah. We found her with the body in his apartment. He had a bullet in his head. What else do you need to know?’
‘Maybe he needs to know that I was the one who called in the murder and that I have already told you why I was there,’ I jumped in. Hell, it was my ass he wanted to throw in jail. The least I could do was stand up for it.
We stood there for twenty minutes, during which Mank noted all four of my points above about this being a bad arrest for Brooker, but it wasn’t until he threatened to call Peabody on Staten Island and ask if she thought I’d killed Merchant that Brooker put up his hands in surrender.
‘Fine. I acted rashly. But I don’t like her breaking into a cop’s apartment with him dead on the floor,’ he said. To Mank. ‘I’m gonna keep looking at this.’
‘Look all you want,’ Mank told him. He looked at me. ‘Need a ride?’
‘You know I do.’ He had, after all, dropped me off at the ferry.
We drove back to my apartment in Mank’s car. He said he’d called Ken and Aunt Margie and told them he’d handle the ‘arrest’ so they shouldn’t worry. ‘How did you find out I was being arrested?’ I asked him. ‘There wasn’t time for Brooker to file it and show up on your NYPD sites.’
‘Claire Peabody and I were in the academy together,’ he said. ‘She started going back through the case that Merchant was working, found Damien Van Dorn, and saw I was the detective assigned to his disappearance. She called me.’ At this time of night on FDR Drive, there was no way to not be at or below the speed limit, but Mank wasn’t being as painstakingly careful as Brooker. I notice how people drive.
‘She doesn’t think I shot Merchant, does she?’
Mank made an amused face. ‘No. But I’d like to know who you think might have done it.’
‘I’ve been giving that a lot of thought.’ And I had. I mostly wasn’t listening to Brooker while we drove up to what was clearly not going to be my arrest for murder and that gave me time to sort out the facts, of which there were both too few and too many. ‘I believed Jules when he told us he hadn’t ordered anyone to harm Damien, and as far as I can tell he didn’t have any reason to want to kill Merchant.’
‘That “as far as I can tell” goes a long way,’ Mank pointed out. ‘There’s a lot you still don’t know about what happened and why it happened.’
Yeah, thanks for pointing that out, Mank. ‘What I do know is that I was hired to find Eliza and now she’s missing and probably being held against her will. The murders are your job, you being the cops. I need to find Eliza.’
He nodded his agreement. ‘If we don’t know who’s holding her, that becomes considerably more difficult,’ he said.
‘I haven’t heard from Ken because he thinks he’s on stakeout and probably believes I’m still observing radio silence because he hasn’t checked his texts. I should call him and find out if anybody was at Rainbow’s place.’ I picked up my phone, my good old phone, my friend, my companion. I’d missed it so.
Mank put his hand up to stop me, the spoilsport. ‘I heard from him. Ken says there aren’t lights on in the apartment but he can see something flickering. He thinks Eliza might be there with a candle or something.’
‘Then why aren’t we headed there now?’ I asked.
‘Who said we’re not?’
