Bad Blood (36 page)

“Stay with it,” the anchor said. “We understand there are Keating Properties offices worldwide, owned by the family of Mr. Quillian’s late wife. Is that true?”

“Zap him, will you?” I asked Nan as I sipped my Scotch. “I don’t think the Keatings are likely to shelter the bum, here or abroad. Any word on Lawrence Pritchard?”

“He’s dug his heels in. He’ll be served with a grand jury subpoena, but my guess is we won’t get anything from him. He’s clammed up as long as Quillian is on the loose.”

“Did you get any information on how Artie’s doing? And Oscar?”

“Artie’s coming along fine. Can’t wait to get back to work so he can tell and retell his version of the events. Oscar?” Marisa said. “I think retirement’s the next step.”

“C’mon, tell us about the wedding,” Catherine said. “Everything.”

I went through all the details of the weekend, including my meeting with Luc, while we waited for dinner to arrive.

“Why isn’t the Frenchman here tonight?” Marisa asked.

“Ignacia’ll be out any minute,” I said, holding my finger to my lips. “You think it’s possible for me to have a romance — even for a couple of weeks — without the homicide squad running a rap sheet on the guy or doing surveillance? Just a head start with a bit of privacy when this madness ends — that’s all I’m asking for.”

“A Frenchman,” Nan said, mocking a sigh. “The three of us married-with-children soccer moms will be living vicariously from the moment you get into bed with him.”

“Forget the sex,” Catherine said. “Imagine the meals. You may have to take us to France with you to chaperone this deal. Nothing less or I squeal.”

Ignacia had taken off her jacket and rejoined us. “A little wine?” Marisa asked.

Ignacia shook her head. “I’ll take a rain check, once we find this bastard.”

“Anything new from the lieutenant?” I asked. “What are the guys up to?”

“Mike and some of the others are going underground with the sandhogs.”

“What do you mean?”

“The squad — everyone’s been mobilized. There was a sit-down with the union bosses this afternoon, charting every tunnel and dig and sandhog project in the city. If Quillian leaned on any of Duke’s friends to hide him away, our guys will be looking for him down in the holes.”

“How about his sister, Trish?” I asked.

“A cop is sitting on her house. Mike wants to talk to her,” Ignacia said, putting her feet up on the ottoman. “So far, no luck with her or Bobby Hassett. There’s always tomorrow, Alex.”

“Trish’s phone,” I said. “Did he remember to ask Peterson to dump it?”

“Relax,” Nan said as the intercom rang to announce the arrival of our dinner. “I did the subpoena this afternoon. You can’t run this case anymore, my dear. You’re in somebody else’s hands now. Sit back and let us worry about it.”

The five of us ate dinner together before my friends said good night and Ignacia locked the door behind them. I turned in at eleven, while she was still in the den watching an old movie.

Mercer picked me up at 8 a.m. on Thursday, and I thanked Ignacia as she headed home at the end of her tour.

“You sleeping?” he asked.

“So-so. Anything new?”

“I wish I could tell you something good, Alex. I know you don’t like living this way.”

We parked around the corner from the Hogan Place entrance and Mercer escorted me up to my office. Laura made sure there was no welcoming committee to overwhelm me on my return and kept McKinney at bay while I dealt with the pileup on my desk.

At ten thirty, Mercer and I made our way up to Part 83.

Fred Gertz was ready for his close-up this time. He had opened the courtroom doors to the press and public half an hour earlier, knowing it would be a capacity crowd. Lem Howell was sitting at counsel table, and an all-new crew of court officers — eight of them now — staffed the room. I didn’t recognize the man who had taken Jonetta Purvis’s place, but when he looked up as he saw me start down the aisle, most heads in the room turned around to note my arrival, too.

Shortly after, Judge Gertz took the bench. He strode out of the robing room with an uncharacteristically purposeful attitude, as though he were fit to ascend the bench and take his place among the nine Supremes.

He had prepared remarks to deliver and waited until the two officers in front of the press row had quieted everyone.

For almost fifteen minutes, Gertz droned on about the tragic events of Tuesday morning. He explained that he had excused the jury until next Monday, at which time he expected he would have no choice but to declare a mistrial, because of the media coverage that would have been impossible for any New Yorker to miss. He talked about the courage of the court officers and his staff — with an emphasis on the unimaginable loss of Elsie Evers.

Gertz closed his statement with a self-congratulatory description of how he had used the power and dignity of his judicial status to restore calm after the chaos of the shooting.

He thanked Lem and me for our assistance and waved at Lem to remain seated when he tried to stand to put something on the record.

“There will be no interviews of Mr. Howell and Ms. Cooper. They are still involved in these matters, and while I’m not going to gag them, I think it would be most inappropriate if they make any public comments.”

Then Gertz walked off as briskly as he had entered, and the reporters raced out to call in their stories.

Lem crossed over to talk to me. “That gets the man his fifteen minutes of fame, I’d guess. Or do you think he didn’t want us to talk because he’s afraid we might say that when he was hiding in the kneehole under the bench, I didn’t quite think he was doing much to restore order in the court?”

“He can’t really believe his own statement, can he?”

Lem had clutched my forearm in his usual style. “You okay, Alexandra? I hope you understand that I was as shocked, as surprised, as appalled, as you were by what happened in here with my client.”

“I know that, Lem.”

“Miss Cooper,” the substitute clerk called out. “There’s a call for you on the DA’s phone over here.”

I broke away from Lem and signaled for Mercer to wait for me in the well of the courtroom while I took the call.

“Alex? It’s Laura. I’ve got Jerry Genco on the phone. He said it’s urgent. He asked me to patch him through to you.”

I was standing in the same place I had been when the door had opened on Tuesday and the defendant had grabbed Elsie’s gun to shoot her. I was tethered to the wall by the long beige extension cord, waiting for Genco to come on the line.

“Alex? Forensic biology ran our sample overnight for that prelim I promised you.”

“Yes, Jerry?”

“I never expected to have a result as fast as this, but the match comes up in our own linkage database.”

“To whom? Can you be more specific?”

“The fetal tissue I extracted yesterday, that’s what I submitted to the lab. I don’t know much about the old case, but I never thought I’d be ready to give you confirmation on the paternity as fast as this.” Genco paused to take a breath. “Rebecca Hassett was pregnant with Brendan Quillian’s baby.”

“God, my heart breaks for that kid,” I said to Mercer as I slumped into the chair at counsel table in the empty courtroom. “Why didn’t we think of this?”

“Hey, I missed the same signs you did. Mike told me all that talk about how Bex had spent so much time at the Quillians, practically living in their house.”

“Of course she wanted to come into Manhattan with Trish the day she went to have lunch with Brendan and meet his fiancée,” I said. “No wonder he became so upset when he saw Bex in the rowboat. He probably thought she was going to do something to break up his engagement, act out in front of Amanda Keating. Who knows how long she’d been sleeping with him at that point, on his infrequent visits home?”

“Or playing hooky, slipping into town to meet up with him somewhere. Then she appeared at the church the day of the wedding and went home to the Bronx, all furious with Trish. By then, Bex was pregnant.”

“You should have seen that pitiful sight when they opened the coffin yesterday. And I’m thinking she was buried with a stuffed animal like it was a childhood toy.”

“And wasn’t it that?” Mercer asked.

“A little brown-and-white bulldog? Try Jack the Bulldog, the mascot of the Georgetown Hoyas. A present from Brendan, no doubt. I suppose some family member put it there beside her without having any idea what it stood for.”

Mercer and I had been to enough college basketball games at the Garden to recognize the symbol of Brendan’s alma mater.

Mercer said, “So if we suppose Brendan knew Bex was pregnant—”

“Of course he knew,” I snapped. “He was calling her house, up until the day of the marriage. He was probably trying to reason with her, checking on whether or not she’d told anyone about it. Wondering how she would be able to deal with it, knowing that terminating a pregnancy wasn’t an option with the religious upbringings they’d both had.”

“There’s his whole golden opportunity — a new life as part of the Keating kingdom — just weeks away from being formalized, and he’s messing around with his kid sister’s best friend.”

“And she’s the only one — the only person in the world, little Rebecca Hassett — who stood a chance of getting in the way of Brendan’s shot at the entire Keating fortune.”

Mercer was leaning against the edge of the table, working the points over and over, and shaking his head from side to side. “Alex, it still doesn’t change the fact that Brendan was out of the country on his honeymoon the night Bex was killed.”

I tossed my head back and grimaced. “But look at the weight it adds to his desperate breakout this week. Who else stood to know that in a careful reexamination of the body, there was physical evidence that connects him to a murdered teenager?”

Mercer patted my hand. “Look, he may have been afraid an exhumation would reveal the girl’s pregnancy. Maybe even tie him to it, since you gotta figure he knows more than the average Joe about DNA after the investigation of Amanda’s murder. Somebody was smart enough to kill his wife without a trace of any forensic clues. That still doesn’t link him to Bex Hassett’s murder.”

“Let’s let them lock up the courtroom,” I said, standing up to leave. “You want to call Mike and break the news to him? I think it’s time we sit down with Trish Quillian. Maybe he can have her picked up. And you double-check with your friend Kate Meade.”

“I know, I know. Did Kate save anything that proves that Amanda and Brendan were in Europe the night Bex was killed? Souvenir postcards or photographs she might have in a scrapbook somewhere?”

“Exactly. I’d better tell Battaglia about what’s been going on at the morgue.”

Mercer made his calls to Mike and Kate, then went down to wait for me in the car while I briefed the district attorney. Then we drove together uptown to the Manhattan North Homicide Squad.

Mike was sitting in the lieutenant’s office, his feet on the desk. He was wearing the same clothes he’d had on the day before and was unshaved as well. He was eating an egg sandwich and greasy french fries at one o’clock in the afternoon.

“Breakfast?” Mercer asked.

“I think it’s yesterday’s dinner. We didn’t spend much time aboveground. It was a long night with Teddy O’Malley nosing around the water tunnel and a few other sandhog holes.” Mike stuck a finger in his ear and wiggled it around. “I can’t get that sound of dripping water out of my head. And I was just about to go home for a while when you called.”

“Go ahead, then. Mercer and I can handle this.”

“If I remember correctly, you and Trish Quillian didn’t exactly bond when you met. I’ll run this one my way.”

He was more likely to have success with her than I was. “Are you going to tell her about Bex? About the baby?”

Mike looked at Mercer. “I don’t think so. Not yet. I’m not looking to fuel her up with information. I want to see what she gives us.”

Mercer nodded in agreement.

“Maybe this is what old Phinneas Baylor meant about Trish. About saying she should dig for the bones in her own backyard. Maybe these are the bones he meant.”

“You have anything to hit her with?”

Mike wiped his hands on his chinos and reached for papers on the desk. “From the phone company. Our boy Brendan finally called his sister after his shooting spree on Tuesday. Here’s the incoming right here on the dump of her phone.”

“What’s that worth?” I asked. “From a booth? From what location?”

“Not so lucky. He called from the cell phone of the guy he carjacked. Only used it once, best I can tell. May have thrown it away after that. But this clocks him in for four and a half minutes with his baby sister. We can start there.”

“Is Trish here?”

“Yeah. Across the hall in the captain’s office. Roast beef on rye with a root beer. I don’t think she’s eaten in a week. Two of the guys picked her up at home after Mercer called. Peterson wants a team sitting on her house full-time now in case Brendan makes a guest appearance.”

I waited for Mike to finish eating. Mercer left the room and came back with our vending-machine lunch. A choice of entrées — M&M’s, red licorice Twizzlers, or a Milky Way — and a soda for each of us.

“Kate Meade seals the deal. Very sentimental type. Saved an album with photographs of the wedding party and letters Amanda wrote on her honeymoon. There’s a snapshot of Amanda and Brendan at the Trevi Fountain, with a date stamp on the back. All in sequence with the rest of their travels. Get Brendan Quillian out of your brain, Ms. Cooper. He didn’t kill Rebecca Hassett.”

Mike rolled up his empty bag and tossed it in the garbage. “Why don’t you come with me, Mercer? Alex, you can watch through the one-way mirror. Better you don’t set Trish off, okay?”

“She’s all yours, Detective.”

I took my soda and went off into the room adjacent to the one they would use for the interview. A few minutes later, Mike opened the door for Trish Quillian, who looked nervously around the small, bare rectangular space before sitting down and resting her elbows on the table. She was wearing a black polyester track suit that zipped up the front and clung to her thin frame.