Outrage (20 page)

“That’s not what I’m saying,” Karp replied evenly. “Mr. Yancy, I am truly sorry for what happened. I know you loved your wife. But does it matter to you that we get the right guy for her murder? Or will just any poor sap do?”

Yancy stopped. “Of course not.”

“Well, if the wrong man is convicted,” Karp said, “not only will an innocent man pay the price, it also means that the real killer is out there on the streets, thumbing his nose at the cops, at you, at me, at our entire system of justice. And let me be very clear about this: Guys like this don’t stop killing. They like it. And I very much want whoever committed those crimes to pay for them. Now if I could just show you—”

Yancy cut him off as he whirled around to face him. “I don’t need to see any more photographs,” he cried out. “I came home that day and found my mother-in-law lying in a pool of blood and my wife lying on our bed, where she’d been—” He stopped talking and put a hand over his mouth as though he might be sick. When he recovered, his voice was barely above a hoarse whisper. “I see those images every night before I go to sleep. I don’t need any more photographs.”

Karp winced at the man’s pain. “I understand. But I wasn’t talking about photographs. I wanted to show you a ring and see if you can identify it.”

Yancy scowled. “I’ve already seen one ring and it wasn’t my wife’s.”

The other three men shot each other alarmed glances. “You were already shown a ring?” Karp asked.

“Yes, that detective—Graziani—he showed me a ring he thought was my wife’s engagement ring, but it wasn’t,” Yancy replied.

There were more glances, only now they were angry. Karp pulled a sealed plastic bag from a manila envelope he was carrying, opened it, and removed the ring. “Would you look at this ring please?”

Yancy accepted the ring and shook his head when he looked at it. “That’s the same ring Graziani showed me, and like I said, it’s not my wife’s ring. He said Acevedo confessed to taking it from Olivia, but it’s not hers.”

“You’re sure?” Karp asked.

“I’m positive,” Yancy said. “When I asked him what it meant, he said it wouldn’t matter. He said maybe Acevedo took the ring from another victim. He said the guy’s a serial killer and probably takes his victims’ rings by cutting their fingers off. Like some sick calling card.”

Karp pointed to the ring in the bag. “I just want to be sure about this ring,” he said. “There’s an inscription on the inside of the ring. You can make out the word ‘Always,’ but the rest of it appears to have been removed.”

Yancy shrugged. “Hers never said ‘Always’ and the inscription area on this ring isn’t long enough for what would have been there if it was my wife’s ring.”

“Which said what?” Karp asked.

A slight wistful smile came to the man’s lips for a moment before disappearing again. “‘Love goes toward love.’”

“From
Romeo and Juliet,”
Karp said.

“Very good, you know your Shakespeare,” Yancy replied, and then looked puzzled. “But I don’t get it. Don’t you guys talk to Graziani? How come you didn’t already know this isn’t her ring?”

“Could be a miscommunication,” Karp replied.

Yancy looked skeptical. “Or maybe he just didn’t tell you for some reason.”

“We won’t know until we talk to him,” Karp said. “Did he ask you about the ring before or after Acevedo was indicted?”

“I believe Detective Graziani showed me the ring a day or two before Acevedo was indicted,” Yancy answered, “because after the indictment I read about it in the newspapers and was irritated that no one bothered to tell me.”

Yancy walked the men back to their car. As Karp got in the backseat, the professor leaned over to speak to him. “One thing I don’t get: If he didn’t do it, why’d Acevedo confess? Does he get a kick out of pouring salt on wounds?”

Karp looked troubled and shook his head. “Good question. But right now I’m focused on finding who killed your wife and mother-in-law and making him pay.”

“So now what?” Yancy asked.

“We’ve got to go back and talk this over,” Karp replied. “But whatever happens, I’ll call you as soon as I know anything.”

Tears came to Yancy’s eyes. “This arrest really got my hopes up … that maybe someday I’d get some closure and be able to move on. If this other detective is playing some sort of game, I can’t even think of the words to express the cruelty.”

Fulton leaned from the driver’s seat across Guma so he could look up at Yancy. “I can’t speak for Detective Graziani. But I promise you, we will not give up until we’ve got the right guy and you get that peace.”

As soon as they pulled away from the curb, Karp leaned forward to speak to Fulton. “Clay, do you know Graziani?”

Fulton shook his head. “Can’t say I do,” he said. “But counting all five boroughs there are some thirty-seven thousand sworn officers with the NYPD, so it’s no surprise. You need me to reach out and find out what I can about him?”

“Yeah, I want his personnel file,” Karp growled. “If you run into any trouble getting it, let me know, and I’ll call in a favor with the chief. That son of a bitch withheld exculpatory evidence, and his ass is mine.”

“H
E’S HEADING THIS WAY RIGHT NOW
.”

Marlene turned around in the direction indicated by Raymond and saw a young acne-scarred man with peroxide-blond hair approaching on the sidewalk. He noticed Marlene’s look and his street sense warned him to veer away from the woman with the monster dog. He suddenly changed course toward the interior of the park.

Stepping toward him, Marlene shouted. “Hey, I’d like to talk to you! I’m not a cop!” She might as well have said she was going to shoot him. He ran.

Marlene sighed and glanced down at Gilgamesh, who gave her a look that seemed to say, “How much of a head start shall we give him?” She nodded toward the running man.
“Prendere,”
she said.

Gilgamesh grinned and without a sound took off after the man, who peered back long enough to see the dog in pursuit.
He shrieked and didn’t make it another twenty feet before Gilgamesh knocked him down. Crying out in fear, the man rolled over onto his back and put his hands up protectively while the dog simply held his ground, a deep growl rumbling in his massive chest.

Afraid to move anything else, the man only flicked his eyes over to see the woman walk up in no great hurry. “Don’t let him bite me,” he begged. The sweat pouring off his face was due more to fear than the hot and muggy New York afternoon.

“Then don’t do anything he might interpret as unfriendly,” Marlene replied. “I only told him to catch you, not have you for lunch. But as you have noticed, he’s really fast, and if you do something stupid, he may react before I can stop him.”

It was a lie, of course; Gilgamesh would not savage the man unless Marlene commanded him to
assalire
, the Italian word for “attack,” just as
prendere
was Italian for “catch.” But the man trembling on the ground didn’t know that and for the moment Marlene was willing to let him remain ignorant.

“I want to ask you some questions,” she said.

“I want a lawyer,” he replied, keeping his eyes on the dog.

“I’m not a cop. I am a lawyer.”

“Then I don’t have nothin’ to say.”

“Okay, I’ll leave you here to play with the doggie.” Marlene shrugged.

“Take your fucking dog with you.”

Gilgamesh growled and took a step forward at the man’s tone. “He doesn’t appreciate your language and neither do I,” Marlene said.

“Okay, I’m sorry,” the man answered. “What do you want?”

“Is your name Al?”

He looked relieved. “Is that all? Fuck no, my name is Jesus Guerrero.”

“No, that’s not all.” Marlene continued. “I want to know if you sold a small diamond engagement ring to Felix Acevedo a few weeks ago.”

Guerrero scowled. “I didn’t sell nothin’ to nobody.”

Marlene looked down at her dog. “What do you think, Gilgamesh, is he lying?” The dog growled again and took another step toward the man. “He says you’re lying.”

The man scowled. “He’s a dog. What does he know?”

“You’ve heard of bomb dogs and drug dogs, right?” Marlene asked.

“Yeah.”

“Well, Gilgamesh is a lie-detector dog.”

“That’s bullshit.”

“No, really, these dogs can smell a lie,” Marlene said. “There’s some sort of chemical odor the body gives off when a person lies. Dogs like this hate that smell. Drives them crazy. To be honest, even little lie-detector dogs can become hard to control, they hate it so much, and Gilgamesh is a big dog.”

“He’s damn big,” Guerrero said in agreement.

“Then when I ask questions, you should try to tell me the truth,” Marlene said, smiling. “Let’s start over.” She then pulled out a photograph of Felix Acevedo and showed it to Guerrero. “Do you know this man?”

Guerrero sat up and shrugged. “I might have seen him once or twice.”

Marlene looked at her dog and gave him a hand signal out of Guerrero’s sight. The dog growled. She turned back to Guerrero and frowned. “Once or twice?”

“Maybe more than that,” Guerrero responded quickly, inching farther back from the dog. “I see him around. Mostly with those other punks in the park. He’s kind of slow, but he’s a pretty good rapper. His name is Felix.” He looked at the dog and smiled slightly when there was no growl.

“That’s better,” Marlene said. “Gilgamesh believes you. Now, did you sell Felix a small diamond ring a few weeks ago?”

“Yeah, I might have.”

“Where did you get this ring?”

“I found it.”

Marlene signaled the dog, who suddenly tensed and bared his teeth. “Oh, bad one,” she said. “You didn’t just find it.” She knew she was running the risk that if Guerrero was the real killer of Olivia Yancy, forcing this confession out of him might mess up the case for the cops. But her senses told her he was no more a murderer than her client.

Guerrero scooted farther away from the dog. “Shit, okay, I snatched a purse from a lady over by the old Yankee Stadium. There wasn’t much in it. A few bucks, the ring, a credit card, and her driver’s license.”

“That right, Gil?
Rilassare,”
she said, adding the Italian word for “relax” to the end of her question.

Gilgamesh sat down on his haunches and for the first time took his eyes off Guerrero. Marlene smiled. “Very good. Now we’re getting somewhere.”

“I remember the last name from the driver’s license,” Guerrero
said helpfully. “Lopez. The same as my mom’s before she married my dad.”

“That’s great,” Marlene said. “You remember anything in particular about this ring?”

Guerrero thought about it and then shook his head. “Not really, except it was pretty cheap,” he said. Then he brightened. “But there was some writing on the inside. A name and a word.”

“I don’t suppose you remember what it said?”

“The name was Al—that’s why you called me that,” Guerrero said, suddenly putting two and two together. “I told Felix that was my name so he wouldn’t think the ring was hot. I don’t remember what else.”

Marlene reached back into her purse and pulled out two more photographs—these had been taken of the evidence by a defense photographer—and showed him one. “Can you tell me if the ring in this photograph looks like the one you sold to Felix Acevedo?”

“Could be. It was something like that.”

“Here’s another photograph,” Marlene said. “It’s the inside of the same ring.”

Guerrero looked at the photo and shrugged again. “Looks like Felix filed the words off. I can’t be sure but I think so.”

“Did you steal the purse that same day?”

“Yeah, a couple of hours before I saw Felix. We done? I got to go.”

Marlene thought about it and then nodded. “Yeah, except I need to know how to reach you in case I need you to testify about the ring.”

“Fuck that,” Guerrero said. “I ain’t testifying or telling you where I live.”

Marlene gave the dog a barely perceptible hand signal and Gilgamesh jumped up, bristling and growling at Guerrero. “Nobody’s going to bust you for the purse snatching. Felix’s life may depend on you telling the truth. So tell me how to find you, and just so we’re clear, don’t make me and Gilgamesh come hunting for you. He has your scent now, the smell of a liar, and it would be easy for him to track you.”

“Okay, okay,” Guerrero said. “I don’t want nothin’ to happen to Felix. He’s an all right kid and everybody already picks on him. I live with my mom in her apartment building, the Hampshires, on the corner of 183rd and Southern, across from the zoo. But if she comes to the door, don’t say nothin’ to my mom about this. She thinks I’m a musician in a band.”

Marlene laughed sarcastically. “She must be very proud. Now—not that I don’t trust you, which I do about as far as you’d get from Gil if you lie to me—let me see your driver’s license, and give me your mom’s address again.”

Grumbling but conscious of the dog, Guerrero stood and produced a driver’s license. Marlene wrote the pertinent information down and handed it back. “One more thing: I need a photograph,” she said, pulling a digital camera out of her bag. “Say cheese.”

An hour later, Marlene stood on the sidewalk waiting for the couple pushing a baby stroller toward her. She left Gilgamesh in the truck so as not to frighten the couple, who she’d learned from a neighbor in their apartment building were out for a midafternoon walk.

“Excuse me,” she said, addressing the tall, pretty woman, “are you Amy Lopez?”

The big, burly man accompanying the woman stepped in front. “Who wants to know?” he asked.

“My name is Marlene Ciampi; I’m a lawyer but right now I’m doing some investigative work for Felix Acevedo,” she replied. “I just wanted to talk to Amy Lopez about a report she filed a few weeks ago about her purse being taken.”

After leaving Guerrero, Marlene had called a friend with the NYPD records division and, after a little wheedling, got him to look on the computer and see if anyone named Lopez had reported a purse being stolen in the vicinity of old Yankee Stadium several weeks earlier. It was just a hunch, but it paid off. An Amy Lopez had reported the theft of the purse, and among the items she listed as its contents was “an engagement ring with the inscription ‘Always, Al.’”