Night Work (11 page)

“Where’s the BCI man?”

“Down the hall. He’s setting up in one of the interview rooms, making himself at home.”

“Where’s Howie?”

“Detective Borello’s not here at the moment.”

“Chief, I get the feeling he’s not here for a reason.”

He took a peek down the hall, first left then right. “Look,” he said, his voice a little lower. “Howie and this guy from the BCI have a little history. There was a case a couple of years ago—you remember that kid that was missing? The one they finally found up in Syracuse?”

“I remember.”

“Howie was working it, but I felt like we needed some outside help. It turned out to be the right call, because we solved the case. But not before the two of those guys just about killed each other.”

“I seem to recall him being unhappy about something.” It was ringing a faint bell, but I had just lost Laurel around then and wasn’t in any shape to listen to the details. “But you’re telling me you sent your top detective home today just to avoid another bad scene with this guy?”

“The BCI coordinator knows the history, too, okay? It’s not a secret. He told me he wasn’t going to send this guy down here if Howie was here waiting for him.”

“They couldn’t just send somebody else?”

“You don’t get it, Joe.”

“What?”

“This guy’s the best there is. I want him on this case.”

“If you ever said that around Howie … Let’s just say I can see why he wanted to kill him.”

“That’s not my biggest problem right now,” he said. “So what happened to your hands, anyway?”

“Well … I don’t have to tell you how tough last night was, Chief. I tried to take it out on the heavy bag and paid for it.”

“It was a tough night, all right. Anyway, come on. Let’s go meet Detective Shea.”

I followed him to the interview room, the same room we had sat in the night before. If I was expecting a G-man clone in a gray suit, I was in for a surprise, because the man who stood up to greet me was something else entirely He was blond, maybe thirty years old at the most, with a haircut that belonged on someone even younger. It was almost like a hockey cut, close on the sides and longer at the back. It was so long I couldn’t believe the BCI let him get away with it.

“Mr. Trumbull,” he said, taking my hand. He didn’t say anything about the tape. “Good morning. I’m Detective Shea.”

He had a firm handshake, but he didn’t overdo it. As I looked at him, I couldn’t help noticing his left ear. He was wearing an earring, but it was too small to make out what it was.

A BCI man with long hair and an earring. I couldn’t quite believe it.

“Come on, sit down,” he said. “You want some coffee or something?”

“No, I’m good.”

“Thank you, Chief,” he said. Chief Brenner gave us both a quick look and excused himself. The BCI man and I were alone in the room now. He took off his jacket and draped it on the back of his chair. The color of his shirt was probably supposed to be coral or shrimp, but to most people it would have just been pink. His tie looked like a van Gogh painting.

He waited until I sat down. Then he did the same.

“I understand you’re a probation officer,” he said. “So I’m sure you know what my office does.”

“Yes. I admit, I was a little surprised. But Chief Brenner tells me you’re the best.”

“I don’t know about that. We did work together before and we got a good result. We’ve kept in touch ever since.”

“Fair enough. So what’s going on with Marlene? Do you have any leads yet?”

He had a leather case on the table. He opened it up and took out a red notebook. “I’ll tell you what we have so far,” he said. “You let me know if I’m missing any details, no matter how small.”

“Okay, go ahead.”

“I understand you were the last known person to see her alive. That was on Saturday night. The two of you had a date?”

“A blind date, yes.”

“Right. From what you told the chief yesterday, it sounds like you brought her home a little after eleven. That checks out with what her landlady says.”

“You talked to her?”

“Today we did, yes. Mrs. Hornbeck. She lives downstairs.”

“I remember,” I said. “Marlene said we had to be quiet because she was a light sleeper.”

“Well, you weren’t quiet enough, apparently. According to Mrs. Hornbeck, she heard the two of you going up the stairs after eleven, and then there was some music played?”

“Marlene on her piano.”

“Okay. Well, apparently after that, things got quiet for a while.”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry, you know I have to ask. The two of you were intimate at that point?”

“Yes.”

“Mrs. Hornbeck says she went back to sleep at that point, but that she woke up again after two o’clock. Somebody was going down the back stairs.”

“No, I was out of there by one thirty,” I said. “I’m sure of it.”

“She was quite adamant about the time. She said she made a note of it, the fact that it was two fourteen and here she was, getting woken up again. She said whoever was going down the stairs was making a real racket this time.”

“When I left, Marlene asked me to be as quiet as possible.”

“And you’re sure it was before two o’clock?”

“Around one thirty. I’m positive.”

He wrote this down in his notebook, then tapped the page with his pen. “So she may not have heard you leaving at all,” he said. “Maybe Marlene left later, for whatever reason, and Mrs. Hornbeck woke up then.”

“But Marlene would have known to be as quiet as I was.”

“You’re right. So now we have another story altogether. You leave, and shortly after, another person goes up the stairs. While Mrs. Hornbeck’s still sleeping. She doesn’t wake up until this second person leaves, making a lot of noise.”

“The second person being …”

“Whoever killed her, most likely. Odds are that person took Marlene down the stairs at that time, too. Which reminds me.”

He flipped the page in his notebook.

“When we opened her apartment, we found a large number of beads all over her floor …”

“Jewelry beads,” I said. “That was me.”

“I don’t think you mentioned that to the chief last night.”

“No, I just remembered. I knocked over a container of beads, all over the place. I started picking them up, but she told me to leave them, that she’d do it.”

“I guess she never got the chance.”

“No, I guess not.” I was starting to feel sick again. I sat back in my chair and rubbed my eyes.

“I didn’t ask you about your hands before,” he said, “but now I’m curious.”

“I had to go look at a woman’s dead body last night. Somebody I had just been with the night before. I do a lot of boxing, so I should have known better than to take it out on my hands.”

“You’re a boxer, eh?”

“Not for real. It’s just something I do to stay in shape.”

“Looks like it works.”

“Should I be asking you if I’m being considered as a suspect at this point?”

“Joe, you know the law. You know I’d have to tell you if you were.”

“I understand that can be kind of a gray area.”

He shook his head. “In the state of New York, you’re officially a peace officer, am I right?”

“Officially, yes.”

“Okay, so we’re talking one officer to another here. Obviously, you know my first job is to evaluate your standing in this case and to eliminate you as a suspect if that’s the way things add up. Beyond the fact that you were with her last night, there’s nothing else to make me believe you’d have anything to do with her death. The chief himself certainly vouches for you, so as far as I’m concerned, you’re just our best source of information on this case, and maybe the only person who can really help us right now. Will you do that?”

“Of course,” I said. “I’m sorry. It’s just…”

“Don’t worry about it. I know this isn’t easy. So tell me, did she mention anything to you at all? Any bad blood with anybody? Or any reason to think that somebody was after her?”

“No. Although, when we were talking … I think she said something about things being a little crazy down in the city, and her wanting to get away …”

“What else?”

“That’s really all she said about that.”

“Think about it. She didn’t say anything else?”

“I don’t think so.”

“I’d like you to try something,” he said, taking out a pad of legal paper. “Instead of you talking and me writing it down, I want you to write it down yourself.”

“Why?”

“Because you’ll remember it better that way. I want you to write down every single thing that comes to you. From the moment you saw her … or before that, even. Where did you meet her last night?”

“At a restaurant uptown.”

“Okay, then. Start with you going to the restaurant. Every single detail you can remember. Everything, no matter how insignificant it might seem. Going to the restaurant, who you might have seen there, inside the restaurant, outside the restaurant … then everything she said to you. Every word you can remember.”

“You want me to write all that down?”

“It’ll take a while, Joe, but it’s important. I want you
to write down every single thing. What color the tablecloths were. How big the pepper grinder was. Everything you can remember, no matter how insignificant it may seem. It may seem a little strange, but this is a technique that works. I’ve seen it happen, believe me. When you do this, you start prompting your mind to remember in a certain way. It’s like self-hypnosis.”

“Self-hypnosis?”

“Exactly. You’re hypnotizing yourself into remembering. At some point last night, something happened, Joe. You heard her say something. Or you saw something. There has to be …
something.
We need that if we’re going to figure out what to do next.”

He put his pen on top of the pad and slid it over to me.

“Otherwise, we don’t have much to go on, Joe. Will you give it a shot?”

“I’ll try.” I took the pen. “From the moment I arrived at the restaurant…”

“Yes.”

“Until when?”

“Until you got all the way back to your place. Who knows what you might have seen as you were leaving?”

“Okay. I got it.”

“Every detail, Joe. Every single little thing. I’ll leave you alone for a while. You want that coffee now?”

“Maybe a Coke instead.”

“I’m on it.”

He opened the door and left the room, leaving me there with one pen, one pad, and a hell of a lot of details to remember. I started writing.
I arrived at the restaurant just before 7:00 p.m.

Details, he said. He wants me to hypnotize myself with details.

Le Canard Enchaîné, on Fair Street.

A quick trip back to high school French class. The little hat thing on the
i
and the accent acute on the
e,
right?

We had arranged to meet there. I had parked down on Front Street, and had walked to the restaurant. As I approached the building

What do I say? I was too nervous to notice anything? You could have led a conga line of dancing poodles in front of me and I wouldn’t have even blinked?

As I approached the building I do not recall noticing anything out of the ordinary. There were cars parked up and down Wall Street on either side, as usual. This is why I had parked on Front Street.

This is ridiculous, I thought. This is a complete waste of time.

God damn you, Joe. Just get over yourself and do this. Marlene needs you to give this your best shot.

Shea came back in and put a can of Coke on the table next to me. He didn’t say a word. He took one peek over my shoulder, gave me the thumbs-up, and left the room again.

I kept going, trying to re-create the entire evening in my mind. The conversation came back pretty well,
but everything around us was a blur. Aside from the waitress bringing our food over, I just didn’t have any reason to notice anything else in the restaurant. If someone was there watching us … As a witness I was a total bust.

The time passed slowly. I worked hard at it, going through the rest of the evening, walking around town, going upstairs to her place. The music on the piano. Me leaving, driving back home. I ended up filling nine pages.

When I was done, I leaned back in my chair. My right hand was stiff from all the writing, aside from hurting like hell to begin with. I finished the rest of my Coke, now lukewarm.

I was about to stand up when the door opened behind me. Shea poked his head in and asked me how I was doing.

“I think I’m done,” I said.

“Very good.” He came in and sat down across from me. I slid the pad over. “So how did it go?” He skimmed the first page, then flipped through the rest. As he was doing that, I found myself staring at his earring. He looked up and caught me.

“I was just wondering about the earring,” I said.

He reached up and tugged on it. “My little pistol,” he said. “My wife gave this to me. I collect western six-shooters.”

“I’m surprised the BCI lets you wear it.”

“They’re cool with it.”

Just one more strange note on a strange day. The BCI is cool with earrings.

“So what did this do for you?” he said, paging through my write-up. “Did it make you remember anything?”

“I’m afraid not. I don’t remember seeing anyone suspicious, or her saying anything specific about … I don’t know … anything. Or anybody who might have wanted to hurt her.”

“It was worth a shot,” he said. “Maybe something will still come to you. Let me give you my card.”

He took a silver card holder out of his pocket, opened it, and handed me a card. William T. Shea, New York State Bureau of Criminal Investigation.

“What are you going to do now?” I said.

“We’re still trying to contact her family in Pennsylvania. If we can’t reach her parents by phone, we’ll get the state police down there to find them.”

“That’s going to be rough.”

“Before you go,” he said, “let me ask you something.”

“Go ahead.”

“The chief tells me you suffered a personal tragedy a couple of years ago.”

“Yes, my fiancée was murdered.”

“I’m sorry.”

“What about it?”

“I’m just thinking out loud,” he said. “Do you think there could be any kind of connection?”