Devil's Bridge (7 page)

“Things going okay for you?” Vickee asked, moving her chair closer to mine. “You’ve certainly got Mike in a good mood.”

“Can you remember what it’s like at this stage of a relationship?” I asked.

“First time or second?” Vickee and Mercer had split years ago, before Logan was born, because she feared his devotion to the job led him to take risks with his life. “It’s always tricky at the outset.”

“Even trickier with our work situation.”

“C’mon, now. Mercer and I are both on the job. We used to have cases together all the time. That can’t be the issue.”

“Totally different dynamic than yours, with one of us prosecuting and the other handling the investigations.”

“Why? You’ve always ridden these guys as hard as they’re able to go. Like you’re suddenly afraid Mike can’t take direction from you?”

“Nothing new about that, Vickee,” I said with a smile. “Mike and I will go right on doing what we’ve always done. He and Mercer are the best cops I’ve ever known, and that never changes. They do the heavy lifting and I get the evidence to hold up their collars in court.”

“So stop making a big deal about it.”

“I think the department bosses are watching us like hawks. Battaglia, too. I’m not exactly sleeping with the enemy, which is how they seem to be treating us, but it does make things very complicated sometimes. They figure I’m just playing with their ace detective. That once I toss him aside he’ll be useless to them.”

“Well, are you?”

“Am I what?”

“Just playing with Mike’s emotional well-being.”

“I’m out of here before I snap at you, okay?” I lifted my bag off the floor to pull out some cash and get ready to leave. “Are you turning on me, too? Everybody is pushing this relationship along because we’ve been in each other’s lives for so many years. We’re not even living together yet or anything remotely close to that. Mike’s a quirky guy, Vickee. You know that as well as I do.”

“And you’re all sunshine and light? Give me a break, girl.”

“I have never in my life claimed I was easy. But this is a man who lives in a studio apartment so small and so dark that he nicknamed it ‘the coffin.’ This is a guy who is so used to his privacy and his man-cave ways, who keeps every ounce of his sensitivity bottled up inside him so far that even a suppository wouldn’t unglue him, that there are times I—”

“Don’t you even think about bad-mouthing Mike Chapman to me, Ms. Cooper,” Vickee said, wagging a finger at me.

I dug in my bag again to find my phone. “Why are we having this conversation? I think it’s a little too much Scotch on my part, for sure. I’d never bad-mouth him. I simply tried to give you an honest response when you asked me how things are going. And all I said is that some things are tricky with Mike and me. You want this transition to be a smooth one? Then give us some time and space.”

“Don’t lay one of your high-profile, strung-out, going-to-pieces bits on him because of this Antonio Estevez dirtbag. He doesn’t need it right now, okay?”

“Like I would do that?” I said, tapping the Uber car service app. “What’s got your nose so out of joint tonight? Mercer must be complaining about the fact that Mike and I have something going on.”

“Forget I said anything. And for God’s sake, don’t tell Mike. You texting him already? He’s got a homicide to deal with.”

“This whole conversation is forgotten,” I said, pushing back from the table. “And no, I don’t text him while he’s working a scene, Vickee. Something has you all gnarled up.”

“What’s with Uber?” Alan Vandomir asked, catching the screen on my phone before I stood up. “I’ll drive you home.”

“No problem. I have no intention of breaking up this cozy gathering. You stay right here,” I said, punching in my destination on the app. “I’m close enough to walk, but if I said I was going to do that, all you Cub Scouts would be on your feet to protect my honor.”

“Whatever’s left of it,” Alan said.

“Giuliano is right at the front door. He’ll see to it that I get in my chariot, and here’s some dough for my share of the bill,” I said, plunking down money, then reaching for a biscotto as I left the table. “
Ciao
, guys. See you tomorrow.”

I shimmied through the bar crowd again and looked down at my phone. An Uber driver had responded to my request and would be at the exact location I ordered, right around the corner from the restaurant on 65th Street, in two minutes.

I waited inside for a bit, to make sure the driver would be there. Giuliano held the door open for me. “Thanks again, Alessandra. Everybody have enough to eat?”

“Perfect, Giuliano. See you in a few days.”

I stepped down onto the sidewalk and turned north on Second Avenue, in the direction of my apartment. Traffic was heavy, as it usually was, heading for the entrance to the 59th Street Bridge out of the city, just a few blocks the other way.

At the first corner, I crossed Second and made a left turn onto the quiet side street, looking over my shoulder to make sure Vickee hadn’t followed me out. I couldn’t figure out why she was so testy this evening, and I didn’t want any more judgmental jabbering.

The black sedan I expected wasn’t there yet, but it looked as though an SUV had pulled up to take the job.

I walked toward it, at the edge of the curb next to the fire hydrant. The windows were tinted, but I could see the driver motioning me to open the rear door.

I heard the click of the lock and I pulled on the handle. Just then, I picked my head up and could see the lights of a black sedan approaching the rear of the SUV.

I hesitated for a second as I opened the door, wondering if there was a mix-up in cars. But in that single moment, I felt a tug on my arm from a figure sitting in the backseat of the SUV. His hand was on my throat before I could open my mouth to scream. He covered my nose with a cloth that reeked of the powerful sweet smell of chloroform.

I tried to pull my head back and break away, but in that instant my entire world crashed to black.

“Nice, Sarge,” I said, pushing open the bedroom door inside the apartment of the late Wynan Wilson. I had put on my gloves and booties in the hallway. “Nice that you two waited for me.”

“Dead men don’t got anything better to do than wait, Chapman. There’s too much lead between his ears for Mr. Wilson to be out and about causing trouble. Just figured I’d chill with him till you got here.”

“What’s the word on the ME?”

“The doc’s got a vehicular on FDR Drive. Highway Patrol tells me she just declared the driver dead at the scene. Should be here in fifteen or so.”

I took a couple of steps toward the bed. The belly flab of the large man cushioned his corpse against the paper-thin mattress. He was facedown on cheap linens that had a sheen to them—kind of like fake satin—except for the large patch below Wilson’s head that had been soaked in a mixture of his blood and brains.

“You know him?” I asked the sergeant. “Wynan Wilson?”

“Regular pain in the ass.”

“Felony pain in the ass? Bad rap sheet?”

“Nah. More like a nuisance than a terminal condition.”

I took my pen out of my pocket and lifted some strands of hair from around the entry wound, which was dead center at the indent in the rear of Wilson’s skull.

“Crime Scene should get here before the doc. I asked them to rush it. She’s got good aim, am I right, Chapman?”

“Hard to miss when you put the barrel of the gun against the flesh while your target is sound asleep.”

The entrance wound was small and symmetrical. There was the abrasion ring I expected to find on Wilson’s skin—the residue of gunpowder and cordite—along with the clear imprint of the gun barrel.

“That’s what you’re assuming.”

“Gotta start somewhere, Sarge. Pretty tough for a big man to let someone get that close to him with a cold hard piece of metal and no sign of a struggle. Either he anesthetized himself with three-quarters of that bottle of Rémy or you’ve been nipping at it while you dialed me up.”

The cap was off the bottle on the nightstand. The pungent odor of the alcohol was almost enough to mask the familiar scent of death.

“The fave neighborhood brew. Me, I’d rather go lights-out with a six-pack of Bud.”

I squatted next to the bed. “And I’m thinking she straddled him to get the best angle.”

“Whaddaya mean?”

“It’s all in the details, Sarge. See those marks on his side? See where the fat flops over the waistband of his shorts?”

The sergeant leaned down and squinted. “So?”

“They’re not stretch marks from a pregnancy. You clear on that?” I said. “Same thing on both sides, the left a bit higher on the torso than the right. Not enough to lacerate the body, but just to leave a scratch. I’m guessing the girlfriend had boots on when she mounted him with her gun. Zippers on the inner calf.”

“Whoa. Like S and M? Like this was a game and Wilson forgot the safe word?”

“Nope,” I said, straightening up. “Like ‘these boots were made for running out on you the minute I sink a slug in that pea-size nugget that some folks call a brain and run off with the right reverend’s wrong money.’ The shooter was perfectly positioned for the strike. Wilson’s on his stomach, right side of his head on the mattress. No pillow. Shooter is right-handed. Mounts him ’cause she knows he’s out cold and won’t feel it. Positions the barrel right against the head, pointing up a bit, where it will do the most damage. Much more reliable than trying to direct it while standing beside him. What’s her name, Sarge? The suspect’s name.”

The sergeant looked at his steno pad. “The daughter knows her as Keesh. Been with the old man for almost two years.”

“Is she known to the department?”

“Yeah, KTD as Takeesha Falls. Thirty-six. Born in—”

“Priors?”

“Only a shoplift in New York. But—”

“Gotta be half a hooker.”

“No half about it, Mike. Full-on pros in DC and the great commonwealth of Virginia. Like ten times over, in her younger days. And an arrest for armed robbery in Baltimore that was dropped because of her cooperation against her codefendant.”

“Got it. A woman of great principle and dignity. Another fit in Reverend Hal’s fucked-up flock. You got an APB out on Keesh?”

I was face-to-face with the dead man, kneeling at the head of the bed. He didn’t seem to notice my presence. His eyes were shut—as they had probably been at the time of his murder—and rigor still locked the muscles of his jaw. That fact confirmed that he had probably been dead less than thirty hours, but the medical examiner would ascertain that point with greater certainty.

“Yeah. We went with it about an hour ago.”

“She’s had a full day’s jump on us,” I said. “That sucks. Either of them own a car?”

“Nope. Guys are checking Port Authority and the train stations, as well as all her local haunts. As soon as Lieutenant Peterson gives me backup from your team, we start hitting her friends and contacts here.”

“She works other than hustling?”

“Braids hair occasionally. Makes ’em into dreadlocks. That count as work?”

“It’s a look, Sarge.”

“You see some of those pro ballplayers? You can bring them down by their dreads instead of a full-on tackle.”

I reached my right arm in under the mattress. I’d done it enough times that even the ME wouldn’t have a clue I’d been there.

“Keesh got it all, Chapman. All the cash.”

“You know that how?”

“Well, I, uh, the first cops on the scene did exactly what you’re doing, and then I tried my own luck when I got here.”

“Damn it, Sarge.”

“You want me to turn my pockets inside out? You think I’d take—?”

“Don’t wet your pants, Sarge. It’s not the money. I’m just worried about whether all your digging in the box springs rocked the body. This case looks pretty much straightforward. I don’t want to screw it up with postmortem artifacts like bruises on Wilson’s gut ’cause there was a treasure hunt going on beneath him. I don’t want to set Keesh up with a self-defense argument by having her claim he was face-to-face with her, threatening her, so she had to shoot just as his back was turned.”

No one was supposed to touch the body until the medical examiner arrived. But the natural instinct of good cops to look for identification in the clothing of a deceased found in a park or deserted apartment, the curiosity to see whether there were bullet holes or stab wounds that caused the death, or the desire to be the first to find a clue that might solve the crime drove many investigators to break the most basic rules.

“You got a rock crusher here, Chapman. Don’t look to blame me if you can’t nail Keesh for murder. There’ll be fingerprints and DNA of hers all over this pad.”

“She’s been banging the guy for two years, Sarge. Of course Keesh has left junk all over the place. That won’t be dispositive of anything. What’s the daughter’s name?”

“Wilson’s daughter? Angela. Twenty-eight years old. She’s good people. Works as a home health-care aide for an old lady up the block.”

“Is that her wailing?”

“Yeah. I stashed her with the next-door neighbor so you could talk to her. I didn’t want her to leave.”

“Thanks.”

“She’s been howling on and off the whole time. I thought Pops here might actually open his eyes from the commotion. I’d get to her soon if I was you.”

“You would have told me if there was any sign of a gun.”

“None. And neither Keesh nor the deceased had permits.”

“You say Wilson was bagging money for Reverend Hal but he wasn’t known for packing?”

“In this part of town, you couldn’t have a safer job than working for Hal. He’s got an army of ex-cons in his stable, doing all his dirty work, keeping the skeptics in line. Mess with his moneyman and you’re not likely to make it out of church.”

“So Keesh has a history of partnering in at least one armed robbery. She’s a girl who can find her way to an illegal gun,” I said, walking around to the far side of the bed and sliding my hand in again. “And Wilson would have been stupid not to have one.”

“You’re ignoring what I just said about the scuttlebutt on the street. No need.”

“I put it in the category of ‘nice to know,’ Sarge. Maybe he didn’t carry,” I said, pulling open the drawer of his nightstand with a gloved finger, “but my bet is when he was holed up in this dump, he had heat at the ready. Just a matter of finding it.”

“We didn’t do a search.”

“Glad of that,” I said. “We’ll take care of it. Just thinking Keesh would have known where he kept it. Another arrow in her quiver to claim he pulled his own gun on her while he had a load on from the Rémy and she had no choice but to protect herself.”

“You work for the defense team these days?” the sergeant asked.

“Gotta think like the best lawyer money can buy. Best lawyer the Reverend Hal’s missing money can buy, ’cause that’s who Keesh will have.”

My father had taught me most of what I know about investigating a case. He knew—and I had learned firsthand from watching Coop in action—that the point wasn’t just to make an arrest. It was to arrest the right guy and to make sure you got the evidence properly so it held up in the courtroom, no matter who the mouthpiece was for the accused.

“How old was Wilson?” I asked.

“Sixty-six.”

“So maybe she was cheating on him,” I said. “A little more than half his age. Or he thought so and they fought over her possible infidelity.”

“I’m telling you he was sound asleep. What does it matter if they argued before that?”

“May not matter at all if the ME is sure Wilson died right where you found him.”

“You’re just playing ‘worst-case-scenario homicide dick,’ right, Chapman?”

I went into the bathroom and opened the medicine cabinet. There were blood pressure pills and Tums—nothing stronger.

“Impressive, isn’t it?” the sergeant asked, standing in the doorway. “Gets to be a senior citizen with some dough to spend, enough to hook up with a broad in her thirties, and he don’t even need Viagra. Wilson’s the man.”

“So much for the idea that you didn’t search the place.”

“Well, the medicine cabinet,” he stammered. “Just wanted to see if he was on heart pills or had any complications like diabetes. The doc will want to know.”

“There’s not a health condition known to medical science, Sarge, that complicates a hollow-point bullet through the cerebral cortex. Don’t juice me.”

“Hey, I didn’t disturb anything. It was a preliminary—”

“You must have thought there would be a few bills stuck to the denture cream,” I said, brushing past the uniformed sergeant to head to the kitchen. “How about in the cookie jar? You stick your nose into that, too?”

“I opened the fridge. Only thing in it was a meal Wilson never got to eat that his daughter cooked for him. My mother had this habit, Chapman, of hiding her extra dough in the freezer when she went upstate on vacation. Figured burglars would never look there.”

“Wouldn’t have worked at my house. The freezer was the most popular spot. Ice cubes never lived to be two days old, once Brian got home from the squad,” I said, pulling open drawers and looking on shelves between cans of soup and packages of ramen noodles.

“Brian was aces, Chapman. Nobody better.”

I played cool to the comment, but truth to tell was that I couldn’t hear it enough. My father had been hero to more victims than I could count, but he was even larger than legend to me.

I crouched in front of the sink. “Did you check the roach motels?”

“Are you crazy? This building is like a cockroach sanctuary. Like a homeless shelter for the little suckers. Wilson has traps under the sink and behind the toilet and in every crevice in the kitchen. I feel like I’m crawling with them already.”

I reached under the sink—the dark, damp environment that was so welcoming to these creatures—and pulled out one of the large boxes of Black Flag that was clustered in there.

“Your gloves are gonna need gloves if you touch that,” the sergeant said.

I opened the first box. “No vacancy at this motel.”

“How many days’ catch you figure that is?” the sergeant asked, leaning over my shoulder. “Not such a good housekeeper, that Mr. Wilson. Guess the roaches are lured right in by the smell of those hormones.”

“Pheromones,” I said, reaching for the second box, a few inches behind the first one. “Not hormones, Sarge. They’re pheromones.”

“Must be another fifty in there. You got a thing for them, Chapman?”

“Nope. I’ve just got a hunch.”

The first three cardboard boxes of stiff roaches would be off-putting to most people. The fourth and fifth cartons were far more attractive.

Someone had removed the chemical compound that invited the hardy bugs inside to die, and lined the boxes with three layers of aluminum foil. Wrapped inside the foil were hundred-dollar bills, dozens and dozens of them. That seemed to be how Wilson had protected his money from all kinds of unwelcome visitors.