Murder in Hell's Kitchen (15 page)

“Someone who could have killed Quill by mistake and the second man when he got around to it.”

“Right.”

“Still goes back to the super, don't you think? Didn't he have to know someone was living in an empty apartment? Didn't he show the apartment to people?”

“During the day or early evening. This guy could've come in at night from the roof. Maybe the super knew; maybe he didn't.”

“Sounds like a frustrating case.”

“A good one.”

“Well, it got you out to Omaha.”

“You ever hear of a town called Jewell, Kansas?” she asked.

“Yeah, I think so. Very small place a few hours' drive from here. You know someone out there?”

“I may.”

“You planning to go?”

“I don't think so. I want to finish up here and get back to New York. I keep hoping you'll get a call that they've found John Grant's car.”

“With Hutchins in the trunk?” He looked at her soberly.

She sat with her hands around the warm mug, thinking. “I don't know about Hutchins. I still think he could be on the other side.”

“Even with what John said?”

“We'll find out. I think we're going to crack this case this time around.” We better, she thought as she drank the coffee.

17

THE CRIME SCENE detectives turned up nothing of interest in the little blue Toyota. There was no blood, no signs of a struggle, no written message stuck between the seats. It appeared that Jerry Hutchins had abandoned the car, tossed the keys, including his house key and some others, into the grass, and taken off on foot. No weapon was found anywhere in the car, and the glove compartment was closed when the car was found. So he probably hadn't been searching for anything in the last seconds he was in the car.

But was he followed and overtaken, or did he just decide he had more flexibility on foot? Nothing at the scene was definitive. Whatever happened, it had been sudden and quick. Tossing the keys meant that anyone following him could not get into Cory's apartment. But whether he made a successful getaway or had been picked up by his pursuer was a toss-up.

Jane gathered all the information she could, then called New York. This time Captain Graves joined McElroy on his speakerphone, and Defino and MacHovec shared theirs. She gave them everything she had and then let Defino and MacHovec report.

Sean had spent the morning trying to trace the company Henry Soderberg had allegedly worked for, QX Electronics. The company didn't exist anymore, but it had occupied quarters in a building in downtown Manhattan four years ago. Defino had chased over there this morning and talked to the owner, who barely remembered the company. His files showed they had rented a very small office on the third floor for about eighteen months, but signed a lease and paid for a full two years. He couldn't remember how many men worked in the office, but he was sure there were only men. At least, he had never seen a woman there.

The telephone company's records showed phone service for QX for eighteen months, all their bills paid on time. But when QX terminated service, which was a few months after the death of Soderberg, they did not leave a forwarding number. A check of Dun & Bradstreet and TRW showed no record of QX's existence. This alone was not telling. They might have been a start-up company, a couple of guys with a brilliant idea, a Microsoft wanna-be that just never made the grade, and with Soderberg gone, half their resources may have been gone too. So they came out of nowhere and went back to the same place, MacHovec volunteered rather poetically.

Where Soderberg came from was still unknown. Stabile, the owner of the apartment building on West Fifty-sixth Street, had no record of any references or former addresses for him. He had a job and he had plunked down a month's rent and a month's security, and that had been enough for Stabile. So at the moment, Soderberg's origins were as cloudy as those of the company he worked for.

“Who claimed the body?” Jane asked almost in the same breath as did a male voice in New York.

“That is the question,” Sean said. “Nobody, it seems, for some time. Couldn't find any record in his apartment of his having a family, so they left the body in the morgue after the autopsy. Eventually, maybe a couple of days later, somebody at QX Electronics came in in lieu of next of kin and had him sent to a New York funeral home, but don't ask me what they did with him after that. I haven't tracked it down yet.”

“Sounds like he's the key to this whole thing,” Captain Graves said. “We'll have to get on it. Jane?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I think we can leave the search for Hutchins to the Omaha police.”

“I agree.”

“It sounds like he doesn't have the answers we need. You up to coming back?”

“I'll call the airline as soon as I get off the phone. I just want to get to the hospital and talk to John Grant before I go.”

“Get what you can from him. He can probably identify the shooter, even if it was dark. When they get a drawing, they can fax it to us, see if anyone here can ID him. Meanwhile, we'll be looking into QX Electronics and Henry Soderberg.”

That ended her part in the conversation.

“Sounds like you're heading home,” Mike said when she hung up.

“There's nothing else I can do here, at least not now. If you find Hutchins, I'd sure like a crack at him.”

“We'll hold the room upstairs for you.” He smiled.

“I'd like that,” she said.

“And maybe we'll get you to that small town in Kansas to see your friend.”

John Grant was awake and alert when they got to the hospital. He held out his good hand and shook Jane's. “I have to thank you for what you did. I could've bled to death.”

“Thank your wife. If she hadn't called . . . Where is she?”

“Home taking a shower and a nap. She's beat. You must be too.”

“I slept this morning. Can you talk about last night now, John?”

“Sure. Let me go back a bit. I left you maybe eleven-thirty, right?”

“About that.”

“I drove from the hotel to the gas station. I'd guess I got there about midnight, but I can't swear to it. I left the car off to the side so I wouldn't be in the way if someone came in for gas. The blue Toyota was there, on the other side of the station, the right side. I could see it in the light from these tall lights they have out there. There was a car getting gas when I pulled in, man and woman in it, man doing the pumping. She got out and used the ladies' room, and he went inside and paid Hutchins. I waited till they were finished. When they pulled out of the station, I got out of the car and went to the building and stuck my head inside.”

“Did you see any other cars parked there?” Jane asked.

He thought about it. “I don't remember seeing any, but I could be wrong.”

“Go on.”

“Hutchins was there, sitting on a high stool near the cash register. He was reading a magazine. When I came in, he looked over at me and said, ‘Hi,' kind of friendly. I said I just wanted to check in and make sure everything was all right, and he said he was fine, he'd taken Cory home and she was OK, he'd called her. I said if there was any trouble to call nine-one-one, and he said not to worry. That was about all there was. I said good night and went outside to my car. I started the motor and I was just about to pull out when something caught my eye. I could see movement inside the building, where Hutchins was. Someone was inside with him, and I was sure I hadn't seen anyone go in and the place had been empty when I was in there. I got out of the car and started over there when Hutchins flew out the door like a bat out of hell. I called to him but he never stopped. He shouted something like, ‘He's after me,' and then a second man came out. I went for my gun and yelled, ‘Police, don't move,' and the second man turned toward me and fired. I didn't see the gun until it came up.” He reached his left hand over to his right shoulder to indicate where he had been hit. “I hadn't gotten my gun out and the shot pushed me backward against my car. I slid down on the ground and tried to get out of the light. I heard a car start and the shooter went for the blue car and I dragged myself around the side of the building. I didn't have much use of my right arm, and I was starting to feel kind of woozy. I just kept trying to put distance between myself and the building. Next thing I knew, there was another gunshot and I got hit in the thigh. I must have passed out for a while, because when I woke up my gun was gone. He must have thought he'd killed me.”

“Would you recognize him?”

“That's tough. He was wearing a kind of half ski mask, came down just to cover his nose. I'd say he was a little more than medium height, not as tall as Mike over there or me.” He smiled. They were two tall men.

“And you're certain he wasn't inside when you were talking to Hutchins.”

“I would've seen him. But he could've been in the men's room, or maybe next door in the mechanic's shop. I'm sure there's a door from the shop to the snack store, where Hutchins was sitting.”

“And no car.”

“Didn't see one.”

“So he could've been dropped off after dark, or parked down the road and walked the rest of the way.”

“Or he could've come through the woods in the back. I'd take a look-see, find out what's on the other side. Did he get away in my car?”

“Looks that way,” Mike said. “Your car was gone and so was the Toyota when we got there. No other cars there. Sounds like this guy planned pretty carefully. Probably expected to get away in Hutchins's car.”

“Or leave Hutchins dead at the station and melt into the woods,” Jane said.

“He looked like he could melt pretty good. He was lithe, moved like a cat burglar.” John took a breath and leaned back. “I don't know what else I can tell you.”

Jane leaned over and patted his bare arm. “I'm flying back to New York tonight. I'm sorry I got you in this mess.”

He smiled broadly. “Helen's been telling me to take some time off for a long time. She'll be good to me till she gets antsy. By that time, I'll probably be crawling the walls. I hope you come back.”

“If Hutchins turns up, I will.”

“What about my car?”

“No sign of it,” Mike said. “We're keeping our eyes open.”

“He'll have dumped it somewhere. Maybe where he had his car waiting.”

Wherever that was. “John, do me a favor?” Jane said.

“Sure.”

“In a couple of days, replay the whole thing in your mind. If you think of anything else, let me know.”

“Will do.”

“And get better. We'll keep in touch.”

18

THE BEST THING she could book on short notice was a flight to O'Hare, where she had to change planes. She would carry on only her handbag, so if she had to run, she could do it without getting winded. They were in no hurry when they left the hospital.

“You should go home and get some sleep,” Jane said when they got down to the car. “You've been up since last night.”

“No problem,” Mike said gallantly. “I've got the next two days off. I'll sleep plenty tonight. It's been nice having a woman in the house. You're the first one since my wife died.”

“You and Luke have been very nice to me. Come to New York and I'll show you around.”

“We might just do that.”

As he was pulling into a slot in the airport parking lot, his radio made sounds. Jane recognized the voice of the woman who had called earlier about the Toyota.

“Hi there, Sarge,” she said breezily. “Got some news for you.”

“I'm listening.”

“Found Detective Grant's car a coupla minutes ago. How's that?”

“That's pretty nice. You gonna tell me where it is or do I have to beg?”

She described a location that meant nothing to Jane, and they ended the conversation.

“Is it far from the Toyota?” Jane asked.

“Coupla miles. When I leave you, I'll go over there and see if there's an easy route between the car and the gas station. Our shooter could have followed Hutchins when he left the station house, kept on his tail after he dropped his girlfriend, then driven around to park his own car on a street the other side of the woods behind the station. If you've got a good map of Omaha, it's not the hardest thing in the world to figure out. How 'bout we get a cup of coffee?”

“Sounds good.”

After she checked her bag, they found a table and sat down. He was starting to look tired. “You've been up about twenty hours by now,” she said.

“Just about. Don't worry about it. It's not the first time.”

“Or the last. I'm relieved that John looks pretty good.”

“Me too. We'll be knocking on a lot of doors where John's car was found. I can't tell you I'm very hopeful. You park a car at night and pick it up when it's still dark, there aren't many people who notice it. But then, we may only need one.”

“I hope Hutchins is alive. It looks more and more like he's a poor guy who accidentally got caught in something very big and very dangerous.”

“I promise you we'll take this very seriously.”

She dropped the topic and they talked about other things. Mike had a daughter and Luke had a serious girlfriend. He was glad of that but sorry his wife wasn't around to take pleasure in it.

“Sounds like you had a long, happy marriage,” Jane said.

“Not long enough. You ever been married?”

“I don't think I'm cut out for it.”

“You have folks?”

“My dad. My mother died several years ago. It was tough. I was adopted,” she said suddenly, talking about something she rarely mentioned.

“They were lucky, your parents.”

“Maybe. I know I was. My dad always talks about my Irish mother, like it's our secret. He's German all the way back, but I think my mother had some Irish blood in her. She had freckles and a touch of strawberry blond in her hair. So did I when I was a kid, so I guess whoever gave birth to me had some of that, too. But I don't qualify for the Emerald Society.”

“Irish cops.”

“Yeah. I can still drink their beer on St. Patrick's Day if I feel like it.”

“You ever look for your birth mother?”

“Never. And I never will.”

“It's all the rage now,” he said, “everybody going back to their roots.”

“They're welcome to it. I dug mine in the Bronx a long time ago.”

“Been a detective long?”

“Almost ten years. I've been at the Sixth Precinct Detective Unit since I got my gold shield. It's down on West Tenth Street. It's been a good life. I've got a partner that's like a brother to me, plenty of dead bodies to keep me working hard.”

“You sound like you're kissing it good-bye.”

“That's what I'm planning to do.”

“Why do I get the feeling you're not all that happy with your decision?”

“Things were changing. They brought in a new captain last year and he's been on my tail from day one. I put in too much overtime; he finds fault with a lot of things. A few weeks ago he pulled me out of the precinct to work on a high-profile case. Then, a week later, he took me off that and put me on the new squad, investigating cold cases. I'm on what we call a telephone call. The assignment comes in by phone and it lasts thirty days, renewable. I'll tell you, it's the best case I've had in a long time, and I'm glad to be out from under my old boss. But when this is over, they'll dump me right back in the Six. I've had no promotion, no second grade, no raise since I got my gold shield. That gets old real quick. I want to keep moving.”

“There could be another cold case.”

She smiled. “I guess they grow optimists out here.”

“Is that your flight?” He cocked his head as a voice made an announcement.

She listened. “Chicago? Let me check.”

“That's your flight. I'll walk you over. Maybe I'll flash my badge and give you an escort to the plane.”

“Then you promise you'll go home and get some sleep?”

“I promise. After I check out where they found John's car.”

A cop is a cop, she thought as they walked to the security checkpoint. She passed through and Mike showed his ID and followed her through the metal detector. At the gate they were just beginning the boarding process.

“I meant that about showing you around New York,” she said.

“I meant that about maybe I'd take you up on it.”

“I hope you find Hutchins alive.”

“We'll give it our best shot.” He leaned over and kissed her cheek.

A kiss before flying, she thought. It was a very sweet gesture and she felt touched.

When they called her row for boarding, she blew a kiss to him and joined the line.

On the flight to Chicago she drew a diagram in her notebook with Soderberg's name on the right just below center. Then she drew a line and an arrow to Margaret Rawls on the left, one flight up, then one to Hutchins on the top left, then a line with arrows in both directions between Worthman and Hutchins. Those were the connections, none to Quill, none to Mrs. Best.

Whoever Soderberg was, he knew how to keep his identity a secret, but why? She wondered if there was a family somewhere that had never known he died, or that had received a call one day that his body was being shipped to them with no specifics on how he had died and what he was doing in New York. How would they have reacted to such news? Probably they would have taken it in stride if they were informed. Otherwise, there would be a record somewhere of their calling the police, the medical examiner, perhaps even a newspaper or television program.

But if he was the professional he seemed to be, either there was no family or they knew not to ask. MacHovec would have to dig up the telephone records of QX Electronics and check out calls made after the date of Soderberg's death. Unless they had killed him. Who, she wondered, had cleaned out his apartment?

A lot of work needed to be done, more than she had ever dreamed when they took on the original cold case only a week ago. And then there was Hutchins. Poor Jerry Hutchins had gotten away from New York cleanly, only to get himself in deep trouble because of the reopened investigation. They were just landing in misty Chicago when she stuck her pen back in her bag and closed her eyes.

She did have to run for the plane to LaGuardia after all, and she was glad she had checked the suitcase. She wasn't in as good shape as she would have liked—she'd have to start walking to work, she thought—and she was breathless when she got to the gate.

“Just in time,” the smiling ticket agent said, processing her ticket. “Have a good flight.”

She sat between two men on the way to New York, one of them engrossed in his laptop, the other making call after call on the phone in front of Jane to people she was sure would have preferred to be left alone. It was night, for God's sake, and an hour later in New York, but he just kept at it, his voice a little too loud, his laugh a little too phony, telling everyone he knew where he was calling from. Jane got a cup of coffee and considered spilling a little on him, but decided against it. Coffee or not, she fell asleep after she handed the cup back to the flight attendant.

The apartment didn't feel quite like home yet, but it was blissfully warm when she walked in. The first thing she did after taking off her coat was to make the mandated call to the office of the chief of department at One PP to notify them of her safe return. The second was to call the office of the chief of detectives with the same message. After that she went to bed and slept well. When she got to Centre Street the next morning, they were all waiting for her even though she was early.

A mass of paperwork had to be completed—no one got an out-of-town trip without submitting every form and document, in at least triplicate, and then closing out each item after returning—but the debriefing would take precedence. They met in Graves's office, which had been set up with chairs in a semicircle opposite his desk. On his credenza was a carafe of coffee and a tray of sweet rolls. MacHovec, to no one's surprise, had already helped himself to both by the time the others arrived. Defino whispered a few obscenities, not quite under his breath and Jane hushed him.

“We all here?” Captain Graves asked, counting heads. Annie had just walked in and sat off to the side with a steno pad on her lap. “Looks like it,” he said, answering his own question. “Help yourselves to coffee and then let's get started. Jane? I gather there's no word on Jerry Hutchins.”

“Nothing when I left Omaha, and they have my home phone number as well as the numbers here. But Det. John Grant is doing well in the hospital.”

“Glad to hear that. Poor guy answers a phone to give us information and ends up with two bullets in him. OK. You ready to talk?”

She was and she did, going over their stakeout rapidly and then through the interrogation of Hutchins, John Grant's departure from the hotel, the call from his wife, the subsequent discovery of him at the gas station.

“So it looks like somebody knew you were going to Omaha and kept an eye on you when you got there.”

“It looks that way.”

“And we know what that means.” He ran his hand through his perfect hair. “There must be a dozen people on the job who knew you were making that trip.”

“Fifty,” MacHovec said.

“You're right. It could be fifty, starting with everyone in this room and going on from there. There was a ton of paperwork before you left, Jane, and a lot of people signed off. I don't like to think about this possibility, but we're going to have to, and we'll have to increase security. For all we know, you're being watched, and I mean all three of you.”

She had thought about that possibility on the plane. MacHovec and Defino had families, children who went to school, wives who moved around the city in cars and buses and subways.

“Maybe now they've got Hutchins, we have less to worry about,” Defino said.

“Maybe. Jane, I cut you off at the gas station.”

She went on about finding the Toyota and the keys that Hutchins had obviously tossed. “I think I got some sleep about then,” she said. “That was yesterday morning.”

“You stayed in the hotel?” McElroy asked.

“No, I didn't. The Omaha police got a little nervous about my safety. I went out the back way and stayed at a sergeant's house. When I woke up, we went to see John Grant and got a pretty good statement from him. I was on my way to the airport so I didn't call in.” She described John's visit to the gas station after he had left her at the hotel. And finally she told them John's car had been found while she was on her way to the airport. “So I should hear something today. They're going to canvass the neighborhood pretty good, but it had to be left off at night, so don't get your hopes up.”

“But no body,” McElroy said.

“Not in the radio message.”

“OK,” Graves said. He looked more worried than Jane had ever seen him. The easy Hollywood look had dissolved, and today you could believe he was a cop worried about other cops. “We talk about it in this office and your office. Nowhere else. Understood?”

They replied with an appropriate murmur.

“Let's look ahead. We've got two detectives who worked on the Quill case, Bracken and Wright. We are going to have to take a long look at both of them. I know it stinks but we still have to look, if only to clear them. We've got a victim named Henry Soderberg who looked like a poor slob that fell down some stairs while changing a lightbulb. Now he could be the guy Quill's killer was after. You guys turn anything up on him yesterday?” He looked at Defino and MacHovec.

“I think he was born the day he moved into the building on Fifty-sixth Street,” MacHovec said.

“Which means he was some kind of a pro,” Graves said. “And this company he worked for? QX Electronics?”

“Same thing. Came into being when they moved into that office downtown. Also pros. They paid their bills on time, paid their rent in advance, and paid off the rest of the rent due on their lease even though they moved out about five months before it ran out. No negotiating with the landlord, just paid up.”

“And no forwarding address.”

“No nothin'. They paid off their Con Ed bill, the phone bill, the rent, gave the janitor a nice Christmas present, and disappeared into the fog. Well, folks, we have a victim and an invisible company. We have to start digging and find out about both.”