A Simple Act of Violence (51 page)

‘And this guy talked to you about Nicaragua?’ Lassiter asked.

Miller nodded.

‘He’s fucking playing with us, isn’t he?’ Nanci Cohen said. There was a wry smile in her tone. ‘He’s playing with us. He’s teasing us. I mean, tell me the odds, for God’s sake. We find a newspaper clipping about the Nicaraguan election beneath Catherine Sheridan’s bed, and you go over to see the guy and he just happens to end up talking to you about Nicaragua.’

‘He was making a point,’ Miller said.

‘You’re telling me that this was a coincidence?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know what it was . . . it left me disturbed to say the least.’

‘What did? He did?’

‘No, not him. What he said. About coke smuggling in Nicaragua . . .’

‘You mean Ollie North and the CIA?’ Nanci asked.

‘Yes,’ Miller replied.

‘Old fucking news, amigo. You know Janet Reno?’

‘Sure I do.’

‘Right . . . well she is one very tough lady. Anyway, the Miami PD discovered that Contras were being trained in Florida, paid for with money from coke trafficking. Filed this huge report, I mean it was fucking huge, and they gave it all to the FBI. Had a stamp on every page that said “Record furnished to George Kosinsky, FBI”, the name of the agent they collaborated with. And yet despite this report Janet Reno, Chief Prosecutor for the State of Florida, saw no reason to investigate the matter further. You can’t tell me that a tough lady like that would be backed off by some coke dealer somewhere. She was told not to look into it. She was asked politely to turn the other way, you know what I mean? Like I said already, this is old news.’

‘Whatever it is, that’s what Robey talked about.’

‘Jesus,’ Lassiter said. ‘Who the fuck is this guy?’

Nanci Cohen waved her hand at Lassiter and he fell silent.

‘So?’ she asked.

‘So I don’t know how he fits into this,’ Miller said, ‘but still I can’t get away from the identities of these women . . . the fact that we have not been able to establish precise and factual histories for any of them.’

‘The black woman?’ Cohen asked.

Miller shook his head. ‘I don’t think she was part of this guy’s agenda. She started talking to us. Maybe she knew something, maybe she didn’t . . . there’s a good possibility we’ll never know exactly how she and Darryl King were involved. Anyway, the mere fact that she was talking to us was reason enough for him to kill her. The first four . . . I think they are connected - and I think that Robey knows something. I think he’s involved. I have no idea if he’s the one who killed these women, but I am convinced he knows something and he’s trying to tell us what he knows without implicating himself.’

‘And the thing with Nicaragua?’ Nanci Cohen asked.

Miller shrugged. ‘God knows.’

‘We’ve got two pointers . . . the newspaper clipping and this lecture you got last night, but it still doesn’t really give us anything. Not for a search warrant, and certainly nothing to justify an arrest.’

‘We have to follow up on these identities,’ Miller said.

‘Sure you do,’ Nanci Cohen said. ‘You need to do the work that should have been done back when the first one happened. Someone hit a brick wall and stopped. That was just plain lazy as far as I’m concerned.’

Lassiter opened his mouth to speak.

‘Save it, Frank,’ Cohen said. ‘I get the picture. Not enough good people, not enough funding, overtime caps, the same shit we all run into. It happens, okay? I’m not criticizing anyone. I’m not pointing the finger at anyone. But now we have five dead women and we better get our act together before there’s another one.’ She looked at her watch. ‘I have to go. I don’t want to hit traffic.’

At the door she looked back toward Miller. ‘You did good to get in there,’ she said, ‘but right now I’ve gotta figure out some reason to pull him in, something a little more substantial than wasting police time. Meanwhile, follow up on your IDs. And Frank?’

Lassiter looked up at Nanci Cohen.

‘Call me when you have something I can do something with, okay?’

Lassiter raised his hands in a conciliatory manner. He smiled and shook his head. ‘What d’you want me to do, Nanci?’

‘Hell, I don’t know, Frank . . . get something better.’

And with that she was gone.

Roth, Miller and Lassiter said nothing. Lassiter got up slowly. He walked to the door, and when he reached it he looked back at the two detectives.

‘I don’t know what to say,’ he said quietly. ‘Follow the IDs. Get something she can do something with, okay?’

‘Can we have more people?’ Miller asked. ‘Maybe Metz . . . Oliver too?’

‘You are the people I have,’ Lassiter replied. ‘Just you. I’ve got three other murders, a manslaughter, some gang of asshole joy riders terrorizing Gallery Place down in Chinatown. You want to know the truth? Catherine Sheridan was six days ago. She’s old news now. And Natasha Joyce? Hell, Natasha Joyce was some black woman down in the projects that no-one except us gives a damn about. I don’t know how to tell you this any better, but you are as good as it gets on this thing.’

Lassiter shook his head resignedly and left the room.

‘Do me a favor,’ Miller said to Roth. ‘Get all the files we have, everything on all five victims, and bring them up here. I have to go run an errand. I shouldn’t be more than half an hour or so, okay?’

Roth got up from his chair.

Miller watched him go, and then he made his way quickly down the back stairs and out the rear of the building.

Miller took an inconspicuous sedan from the car pool, told the pool chief he’d be back within the hour. He drove east toward Pierce, found Hemmings in her office and walked in without knocking.

‘I don’t know what you did but I don’t like it,’ Marilyn Hemmings said. ‘And I am very, very tempted to ask you precisely where this came from. If it came from where I think it came from . . .’ She shook her head. ‘No, I’m not asking, and I’m not making any assumptions. I already told myself that I wouldn’t ask you about this.’

‘So what is it?’ Miller asked.

‘The prints? God, I don’t even want to know what this is about, Robert. The prints came back flagged. I can’t tell you who they belong to.’

‘Flagged?’

‘Right. Flagged. You understand what that means?’

‘That whoever this is . . . that this person is . . .’

‘Is FBI or NSC or Internal Affairs or Department of Justice. God, any number of groups within the intelligence community. ’

‘DEA?’ Miller asked.

‘Defense Department, State Department, Department of the Interior, Office of Naval Intelligence . . . any one of them. You know the beat on this kind of thing. Whatever you’re looking at stops here, Robert. It stops dead in its tracks. I mean, what the—’ She stepped back and took a deep breath. She raised her hands like she was trying to placate Miller. ‘I don’t want to know where this came from, and I haven’t even told you the best bit.’

‘The best bit?’ Miller could already feel his pulse racing, could feel how his heart had quickened. Marilyn Hemmings looked scared and he felt for her - felt precisely the same thing. He remembered all too easily what Robey had said in the coffee shop, how it was Miller who had failed to appreciate the seriousness of the situation.

‘I put the print together from a number of partials, but there was another print on the handle, too little of it to ID. But there were hairs, long hairs, and I got to thinking that maybe the prints and the hairs weren’t from the same person. This was just a wild one, Robert, a real wild, out-on-the-edge thing, but I processed one of those hairs and I got DNA from the follicle, and I typed the DNA and made a comparison . . .’

‘And it belonged to someone on the system?’ Miller asked.

‘Catherine Sheridan.’

Miller’s mouth opened like he was catching flies. ‘You’re not serious?’

‘As serious as I ever was. I typed it twice just to be sure. The prints are not hers, but the hair is. I even have a physical match to compare it to. I have the woman in my freezer, for God’s sake.’

‘Jesus Christ,’ Miller said. ‘Jesus Christ almighty.’

‘So who is it, Robert? Tell me you didn’t get this hairbrush from someone in the department.’

Miller frowned. ‘Jesus no, Marilyn, don’t be crazy.’

‘It’s not someone we know? Someone we work with?’

‘God no, of course not. What the fuck do you think this was?’

‘I don’t know, Robert . . . what was I supposed to think? You bring me this thing on the quiet, I know there’s a problem with it . . . You lifted this from somewhere, right?’

Miller shook his head. ‘I’m not saying anything, Marilyn. What you don’t know—’

‘Okay, okay . . . so you lifted this from somewhere and you bring it to me on the quiet, and you ask me to check it out and I find flagged prints, and hair belonging to our murder victim. What the hell am I supposed to think?’

‘Where’s the hairbrush now?’ Miller asked.

‘I have it in the evidence room.’

‘Get it for me,’ Miller said. ‘I have to put it back where it came from.’

She laughed nervously. ‘You can’t be serious . . . no way! You’re not going to—’

‘What the hell do you expect me to do with it? Of course I’m going to put it back. It’s not staying here, and I’m not having it any nearer to you than it needs to be. Get it for me and I’ll be gone, okay?’

Marilyn Hemmings paused for a moment or two, and then she hurried out of the room. She was back within moments, in her hand a blue evidence bag containing the brush. Miller rolled it up tight and put it in his jacket pocket.

‘So what do you have?’ Hemmings asked.

Miller shook his head. ‘I have a liar. I have a man who says he knows nothing who evidently knows a hell of a lot more than he’s saying . . .’

‘Do I have to tell you to be careful?’

Miller’s expression didn’t change.

‘I mean it, Robert. I want you to be careful. I don’t know what the hell you’ve gotten yourself into, but you’re too good to waste it all on one case.’

‘It’s alright,’ Miller said. ‘It’s gonna work out. Trust me.’

Hemmings smiled, started to laugh. ‘That sounds like the sort of thing they say in movies just before it all goes to shit.’

‘Let’s hope not, eh?’ Miller said. ‘Thanks for your help, okay? I really do mean that.’ He wanted to reach out and take her hand. He wanted to put his arms round her. He wanted to tell her that she’d been in his thoughts, but he couldn’t say these things. He couldn’t do anything but walk to the door and leave quietly. He drove back to the Second and put the hairbrush inside a sneaker in his locker. Twice he checked that the locker was closed up tight before he left the changing area, and when he reached the door he went back and checked it a third time. He felt like crap. He felt afraid, tired, unsettled. He felt like a criminal and a thief and a liar. He tried to convince himself that he was doing the right thing, but it was merely a rationalization. He had broken the law. Plain and simple. The simple fact that he’d broken the law and learned something of use, knowing full well that he would never be able to use that something, only served to make it worse.

He took the stairs back up to the second-floor office and found Al Roth amidst the files.

‘This is bullshit,’ Roth said as Miller appeared. ‘This is pretty much the worst administration . . . Jesus, I don’t even know where to begin on this stuff.’ He tossed a manila file on the desk and stood up. He walked to the window, hands in his pockets, and stood there for a little while. He arched his back and inhaled noisily.

Miller looked through the pile of folders. Margaret Mosley’s case sheet was incomplete. Half the page was blank, the other half barely legible. In the Rayner file he found three interview sheets that belonged to Barbara Lee, an autopsy report, no case sheet, and scrawled across the top of the back cover a question from Metz: Where’s the original incident report? He read the words, but he could not concentrate. All he could see was the brush, the hair tangled through the bristles, the certainty that Robey had lied and lied and lied . . .

‘So Catherine Sheridan becomes Isabella Cordillera,’ Roth said, interrupting Miller’s thoughts. He had a whiteboard from one of the adjacent offices. He had Catherine Sheridan’s name on the board. Underneath he had written Isabella Cordillera, underlined it twice. ‘And Isabella Cordillera died in a car accident in June 2003. However, the details of this supposed car accident aren’t available.’

Miller - forcing himself to focus on what Roth was saying - indicated the right hand side of the whiteboard. ‘Write single on there.’

‘Single?’

‘Sure. Write the word “single” and then write “no known friends.” ’

Roth did so. ‘Then we have Margaret Mosley,’ he said. ‘No record in June ’69 of anyone of that name being born.’

‘The same with all of them,’ Miller interjected. ‘And don’t forget Michael McCullough.’

‘Criminals,’ Roth said. ‘Informers, witness protection like we said. At least that would make sense, but how the hell do you find out?’

‘I don’t think you can,’ Miller said. He realized his fists were clenched, his knuckles white. His heart was slowing, the sweat back of his hairline was drying and making his scalp itch. He could not remember a time when he’d been more frightened . . . except after Brandon Thomas. Perhaps then.

Roth didn’t reply. He stared at the whiteboard intently.

‘Why is Robey lying?’ Miller suddenly asked, and he realized that he’d uttered something that he was thinking, almost involuntarily.

‘Because he killed Sheridan,’ Roth said. ‘He killed her and he did the others as well. Maybe he’s contract. Maybe he’s just simply out there to get people on the Program. Maybe that’s what he does.’

Miller asked himself what he knew. Robey knew Sheridan. At least knew of her. Her hair was in the brush. She had been to his apartment, or perhaps Robey had taken the brush from her house after he’d killed her. A memento? A keep-sake? Something that would forever remind him of the special moments they had shared together? Whatever the reason, there was now no question that Robey was in as deep as could be.