Caught (12 page)

Walker had worked diligently trying to track down the last two weeks in the life of Dan Mercer. The clues were few. Using his cell phone, Dan Mercer had called only three people: his lawyer, Flair Hickory; his ex-wife, Jenna Wheeler; and yesterday, the reporter Wendy Tynes. Flair had never asked his client where he was staying--the less he knew, the better. Jenna didn't know. Wendy, well, she wasn't in contact with him until yesterday.

Still the trail wasn't hard to follow. Dan Mercer had been hiding, yes, but according to both his lawyer and his ex, it was from threats from overly "concerned" citizens and quasi-vigilantes, not law enforcement. No one wanted a predator in the neighborhood. So he moved from hotel to hotel, usually paying with cash he had picked up from a nearby ATM. Because of the impending trial, Mercer couldn't leave the state.

Sixteen days ago, he had checked into a Motel 6 in Wildwood. From there, he had stayed three days at the Court Manor Inn in Fort Lee followed by the Fair Motel in Ramsey, and as of yesterday, Mercer had been at Freddy's Deluxe Luxury Suites in downtown Newark, room 204.

The window looked out over a shelter nicknamed the Resort (as in Last Resort) where Dan Mercer had worked. Interesting place to end up. The manager hadn't seen Mercer in two days, but then, as the manager explained, clients didn't come here to be noticed.

"Let's see what we can find," Walker said.

Stanton nodded. "Okay."

Walker said, "Mind if I ask you something?"

"Nope."

"No other cop wanted to work with me on this one. They figure, good riddance to a scumbag."

Stanton nodded. "Yet I volunteered."

"Right."

"And you want to know why."

"Right."

Stanton closed the top drawer, opened the second one. "Maybe I'm new, maybe I'll get more jaded. But the law cleared this guy. Period, the end. If you don't like that, change the law. We in law enforcement need to be impartial referees. If the speed limit is fifty-five miles per hour, then you ticket a guy going fifty-six. If you think, nah, don't ticket until he's going sixty-five, then change the law to sixty-five. And it works the other way too. Following the rules, the judge freed Dan Mercer. If you don't like that, change the law. Don't bend the rules. Legally change them."

Walker smiled. "You are new."

Stanton shrugged, still searching through the clothes. "I guess there's a bit more to it."

"I thought there might be. Go ahead, I'm listening."

"I have an older brother named Pete. Great guy, terrific athlete. He was on the Buffalo Bills practice squad for two years out of school. Tight end."

"Okay."

"So Pete's up at camp at the start of his third season. This is his year, he thinks. He's been lifting and working out like a madman, and he has a real shot of getting on the roster. He's twenty-six years old and he's up in Buffalo. He goes out one night and meets this girl at a Bennigan's. You know. The chain restaurant?"

"I know it."

"Okay, so Pete orders wings, and this smoldering chick saunters over and asks if she can have one. He says sure. She makes a spectacle of herself eating it. You know what I mean? Using lots of tongue and she's wearing this scoop top that's begging for an ogling. I mean, she's a total hottie. They start flirting. She sits down. One thing leads to another--and Pete takes her back to his place and gives her what for."

Stanton made a sideways fist and gently pounds it--demonstrating what "what for" meant, in case it wasn't clear.

"Turns out the girl is fifteen. A high school sophomore, but man, she doesn't look it. You know how high school girls dress nowadays. She's decked out like she's serving up drinks at Hooters--or just serving 'em up, if you know what I mean."

Stanton looked at Walker and waited. To keep the conversation moving, Walker said, "I know what you mean."

"Right, so anyway, the girl's dad finds out. He goes nuts, says Pete seduced his little girl--even though she was probably banging my brother to get back at her old man. So Pete gets charged with statutory rape. Gets caught up in the system. The system I love. I get it. It's the law. He is now labeled a sex offender, a pedophile, the whole works. And that's a joke. My brother is a solid citizen, a good guy, and now no team will touch him with a ten-foot pole. Maybe this guy, this Dan Mercer, well, it was a form of entrapment, wasn't it? Maybe he deserves the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he's innocent until proven guilty."

Walker turned away because he didn't want to admit that maybe Stanton had a point. You make so many calls in life that you don't want to make--and you want those calls to be easy. You want to put people in neat categories, make them monsters or angels, but it almost never works that way. You work in the gray and frankly that kinda sucks. The extremes are so much easier.

As Tom Stanton bent down to look under the bed, Walker tried to refocus. Right now, maybe it was best to keep this black and white and stay away from the moral relativism. A man was missing, probably dead. Find him. That was all. Doesn't matter who he is or what he did. Just find him.

Walker moved into the bathroom, checked the vanity. Toothpaste, toothbrush, razor, shaving cream, deodorant. Fascinating stuff.

From the other room Stanton said, "Bingo."

"What?"

"Under the bed. I found his mobile phone."

Walker was about to yell, "Great," but he stopped short.

Knowing Mercer's cell phone number and using cell tower triangulation, Walker had already learned that the last phone call from Mercer's mobile had been somewhere on Route 15 not long before the murder, approximately three miles from the trailer park and at least an hour's drive from this room.

So why would his mobile phone be in the room?

He didn't have much time to think about it. From the other room, he heard Stanton's low voice, almost a pained whisper: "Oh no . . ."

The tone sent a chill straight up the spine. "What?"

"Oh my God . . ."

Walker hustled back into the bedroom. "What is it? What's wrong?"

Stanton held the phone in his hand. All color was gone from his face. He stared down at the image on the screen. Walker could see the phone with the bright pink case.

It was an iPhone. He had the same model.

"What is it?"

The screen on the iPhone went dark. Stanton didn't say anything. He raised the phone, pressed the button. The screen lit up. Walker took a step closer and took a look.

His heart sank.

The lit-up iPhone's welcome screen was a family photograph. A classic vacation group shot. Four people--three kids, one adult--smiling and laughing. In the center of the photograph was Mickey Mouse. And on Mickey's right, flashing maybe the biggest smile of them all, stood a missing girl named Haley McWaid.

CHAPTER 11

WENDY CALLED THE RESIDENCE of Mercer's college roommate, Phil Turnball. After graduating from Princeton, Turnball had taken the express train straight to Wall Street and high finance. He lived in the tonier section of Englewood.

When the Dan episode of
Caught in the Act
first aired, she had tried to contact Turnball. He had refused to comment. She let it go. Maybe now that Mercer was dead, Phil Turnball might be more forthcoming.

Mrs. Turnball--Wendy didn't catch the first name--answered the phone. Wendy explained who she was. "I know your husband's been blowing me off, but trust me, he's going to want to hear this."

"He's not here now."

"Is there a way I can reach him?"

She hesitated.

"It's important, Mrs. Turnball."

"He's in a meeting."

"At his office in Manhattan? I have the address here from my old notes--"

"Starbucks," she said.

"Excuse me?"

"The meeting. It's not what you think. It's at Starbucks."

WENDY FOUND A PARKING SPACE in front of Baumgart's, a restaurant she frequented as often as she could, and walked four stores down to Starbucks. Mrs. Turnball had explained that Phil had been laid off during the economic slump. His meeting, such as it was, was more of a coffee klatch for former masters of the universe--a group founded by Phil called the Fathers Club. Mrs. Turnball had told her that the club was a way for these suddenly unemployed men to "cope and find camaraderie during these very trying times," but Wendy couldn't help but hear the sarcasm in the woman's voice. Or maybe Wendy was projecting. A group of blood-sucking, overpaid, over-important yuppies whining about the economy they helped destroy by feasting on it parasitelike--all while enjoying a five-dollar cup of coffee.

Well, boo-friggin'-hoo.

She entered the Starbucks and spotted Phil Turnball in the righthand corner. He wore a fresh-pressed business suit, and he sat huddled around a table with three other men. One wore tennis whites and spun a racket like he was waiting for Federer to serve. Another wore a baby sling complete with, uh, baby. He gently bounced up and down, no doubt to keep the little one content and silent. The final guy, the one the others were all intensely listening to, wore an oversize baseball cap with the flat bill precariously tilted upward and to the right.

"You don't like it?" Hat Tilt asked.

Now that she was closer, she could see that Hat Tilt looked like Jay-Z--if Jay-Z suddenly aged ten years and never worked out and was a pasty white guy trying to look like Jay-Z.

"No, no, Fly, don't get me wrong," the guy in the tennis whites said. "It's righteous and all. Totally righteous."

Wendy frowned. Righteous?

"But--and this is just a suggestion--I don't think the line works. What with the puppies swinging and all."

"Hmm. Too graphic?"

"Maybe."

"Because I gotta be me, you know what I'm saying? Tonight at Blend. Open mike. Gotta be. Can't sell out to the man."

"I hear you, Fly, I do. And you'll kick ass tonight, no worries. But necklace?" Tennis Whites spread his arms. "It just doesn't fit your theme. You need another puppy reference. Dogs don't wear a necklace, am I right?"

Murmurs of agreement around the table.

The Jay-Z NeverBe--Fly?--noticed Wendy hovering. He lowered his head. "Yo, check it. Shawty at five o'clock."

They all turned toward her. Except for Phil, this was hardly what Wendy had expected. You'd have thought Mrs. Turnball would have warned her about this particular collection of ex-masters of the universe.

"Wait." It was the guy in the tennis whites. "I know you. NTC News. Wendy Something, right?"

"Wendy Tynes, yes."

They all smiled except for Phil Turnball.

"You here to do a story on Fly's gig tonight?"

Wendy thought a story on these guys sounded like a hell of an idea. "Maybe later," she said. "But right now, I'm here to see Phil."

"I have nothing to say to you."

"You don't have to say a word. Come on. We need to talk in private."

AS THEY WALKED out of the Starbucks and back up the block, Wendy said, "So that's the Fathers Club?"

"Who told you about that?"

"Your wife."

He said nothing.

"So," Wendy continued, "what's with Vanilla Ice back there?"

"Norm . . . well, actually, he wants us to call him Fly."

"Fly?"

"Short for Ten-A-Fly. That's his rap handle."

Wendy tried not to sigh. Tenafly was a New Jersey town right down the street.

"Norm . . . Fly . . . was a brilliant marketing guy at Benevisti Vance in the city. He's been out of work for, what, two years now, but he thinks he found a new talent."

"What?"

"Rapping."

"Please tell me you're kidding.

"This is like grief," Phil said. "Everyone does it a little differently. Fly thinks he's got a new market cornered."

They arrived at Wendy's car. She unlocked the doors. "Rapping?"

Phil nodded. "He's the only white middle-aged New Jersey rapper on the circuit. At least, that's what he says." They slipped into the front seats. "So what do you want with me?"

No easy way to do it so she dived straight in.

"Dan Mercer was murdered yesterday."

Phil Turnball listened without saying a word. He stared out the front windshield, his face pale, his eyes moist. His shave, Wendy noticed, was perfect. His hair had that perfect part and a curl in the front so that you could imagine what he looked like as a young boy. Wendy waited, let him absorb what she'd told him.

"Something I can get you?" Wendy asked.

Phil Turnball shook his head. "I remember meeting Dan first day of orientation, freshman year. He was so funny. The rest of us were so uptight, wanting to impress. He was just so comfortable, had such a strange outlook."

"Strange how?"

"Like he'd seen it all already and it wasn't worth getting too worked up about. Dan also wanted to make a difference. Yeah, I know how that sounds, but he really did straddle that line. He partied hard, like the rest of us, but he always talked about doing good. We had plans, I guess. All of us did. And now . . ."

His voice faded away.

"I'm sorry," Wendy said.

"I assume you didn't track me down just to deliver this bad news."

"No."

"So?"

"I'm investigating Dan--"

"Seems you've already done that." He turned toward her. "Only thing left is to pick at the corpse."

"That's not my intent."

"What then?"

"I called you once before. When we first ran our expose on Dan."

He said nothing.

"Why didn't you return my calls?"

"And say what?"

"Whatever."

"I have a wife, two kids. I didn't see where publicly defending a pedophile--even a wrongly accused one--would help anyone."

"You think Dan was wrongly accused?"

Phil squeezed his eyes shut. Wendy wanted to reach out, but again it felt like the wrong move. She decided to shift gears.

"Why do you wear a suit to Starbucks?" she asked.

Phil almost smiled. "I always hated casual Fridays."

Wendy stared at this handsome yet thoroughly defeated man. He looked drained, bled out almost, and it was as if the gorgeous suit and shoe polish could prop him up.

Studying his face, a sudden memory flash of another face stole her breath: Wendy's beloved father, age fifty-six, sitting at the kitchen table, flannel sleeves rolled up, stuffing his rather flimsy resume into an envelope. Fifty-six years old and suddenly, for the first time in his adult life, out of work. Her dad had been a union leader, Local 277, running a printing press for a major New York newspaper for twenty-eight years. He had negotiated fair deals for his men, striking only once in 1989, beloved by everyone on the floor.