Social Death: A Clyde Shaw Mystery (21 page)

I lifted my head an inch. “I’m not taking your lunch.”

Dino, our cameraman, whipped his head around from the front passenger seat. “I’ll take it, man. I’m starving.”

“You’re always starving, man.” Alex pushed Dino’s hand away and patted me on the back. “C’mon Clyde, you look like you’re about to faint. I need you in form when we get out there.”

“Jennifer can get me pizza.”

“This is much healthier than a greasy slice of pepperoni.”

“I get the sausage and pepper.”

“Even worse.” He pulled me up to sitting and unwrapped his lunch. “Now eat.”

I reluctantly took a bite. Then I handed it to Dino.

“Clyde, what?” Alex yelped, pawing at Dino for his sandwich half.

Too late. Dino held it out of his reach. “Is that Camembert I taste?” he asked with a full mouth, taunting Alex.

“Yes,” Alex groaned, giving up. “And fresh roasted turkey, avocado, romaine, and this mustard I picked up in Paris. Can’t get it here.”

Aaron eyed Dino’s windfall from behind the wheel. “You really make the bread, too?”

Alex nodded glumly. “Organic split wheat.”

Jen and I looked at each other. This was a side of Alex neither of us would have guessed existed. “I’ll get us some slices as soon as we get a break,” she said.

We pulled up around the corner of the Haverford. I stayed inside the van and let the sound and truck engineers set up the shot as I continued working on the script with Alex. My phone rang and I stepped outside to take the call from the very irate IO, who first hassled me about where I’d gotten my information, and then refused to confirm the tip. He also declined to give me any additional crime-scene details, like the name of the resident who smelled the body, or how the killer had hidden the body.

I slipped in my earpiece and stepped outside, gathering my team and the remainder of my energy. “Let’s go live, people!” Jen called the studio, Dino hoisted his camera, and I counted down from three. It was go time.

“We’re standing here back at the Haverford, the exclusive Manhattan building where Olivia Kravis, stepdaughter of media baron Charles S. Kravis, was found brutally murdered in her own home,” Alex began before jumping into the scoop about Rachel. A fast five minutes later, he wound up his report, and our team piled back into the van. Our work wasn’t over yet. We still needed to put together a package that could be aired that evening during
Topical Tonight
.

While Alex and I worked on a script, Dino grabbed some fresh B-roll of the building and Jen finally made the pizza run. Once we had three minutes of television gold hashed out, I sprawled out on the last row of seats in the van and shut my eyes.

“You got a date for the fundraiser?” Alex asked.

“I’ve got someone,” I mumbled in reply. The fundraiser was truly the last thing on my mind.

He sat up and peered at me over the seatback. “Who?”

I opened my eyes. “Who are you taking?”

“I asked first.”

Aaron came to life in the front seat of the van. “If you’re taking
Hardlick
you’re making a massive mistake, bro.”

Alex took a swig of water as he leaned his back against the van’s vinyl-coated seating, facing away from me. “You guys really don’t like her, do you?”

“Forget what we think,” I said. “You can’t have a correspondent from a rival network sit at our company’s table. It would be totally inappropriate.”

“Relax. I know I can’t bring Penny. I was going to ask if you wanted to come with me.”

I bit my bottom lip. Did he really just ask me to be his date? Surely he didn’t think it was a good idea for us to turn up at a work function for our first outing together? He’d probably just thought it made sense for us to go together since we’d be working the case together all day before the event began. “Alex, I’m—”

“Don’t worry,” he said, cutting me off. “I got a Plan B.”

“Lucky girl, your Plan B,” Aaron quipped sarcastically from the front seat.

I was about to tell our sound guy to go easy on Alex when my phone buzzed with a text from Panda. “I’ve got more for you,” was all that the message said. It was enough.

I typed out a location for us to meet and put my phone back in my pocket. “I need to go meet a source,” I told Alex.

“Want me to come with you?”

He was trying to be helpful, but I couldn’t take him. I climbed out of the van to the sidewalk. “I need to handle this one alone.”

Walking west to Central Park, I followed the path to the reflecting pond. Little kids stood around the edges, some operating remote-control boats, others watching and wishing their mom or dad would spring for a rental. Panda sat on a bench with a can of soda. “You should be at home,” he said by way of greeting.

I sank down onto the bench next to him. “I know.”

He gestured to my bag. “I see you got it back.”

“Maldone’s assistant found it and had it sent over to Alex. Everything’s still there.” I stopped talking, remembering something. I pawed through my bag until I was sure I couldn’t find it: my birth certificate. “It’s gone.”

“What’s gone?” Panda asked.

I told him about how I’d found my birth certificate in Olivia’s office desk. “You sure you left it in there?”

“Yes, I’m sure.”

He scrubbed his forehead with the heel of his hand. “Why didn’t you tell me about this before?”

“I didn’t think it was important.”

“I ran a search for crimes involving Ketamine in the last twelve months. Almost all of the cases were your standard date-rape scenarios.”

“Any of the perps work for GSBC?” I asked, elbowing him playfully.

“This is serious, Shaw.”

He didn’t have to tell me that. “You heard about Michael Rockwell’s date-rape past?”

“Never proven, but yeah.”

“You said you had more for me.”

He pulled open his khaki parka to reveal a blue tie printed with stalks of corn. “First you must guess correctly.”

“Neal, I don’t think I have enough brain power today.”

“C’mon. It’s an easy one.” He took a sip of his soda.

I gave it another look and shook my head.

He pulled on an earlobe. “All ears.”

“I should’ve gotten that.”

“I’ll give you a pass today, kid.” He patted my back.

“That’s generous of you,” I said, teasing.

He chuckled. “What does Globe-Trotter mean to you?”

“The suitcase brand?” They were fashionable and expensive. They were also built like the old steamer trunks, with roomy insides and hard exteriors made from fiberboard and leather. I only knew all that because Olivia had them. “Rachel?”

“The killer stuffed her body inside one, and then hid it in the storage space. Probably used the elevator to get it down to the basement and everything.”

“Can I take this to air?”

He nodded. “You didn’t hear it from me. Body was wrapped in a garbage bag then locked inside a suitcase”

We sat there in silence, both gazing out over the pond. Finally, I turned to Panda. “So what’s the latest theory?”

“It looked like a lovers’ quarrel—neighbors’ account of two women yelling in the residence, no forced entry, and a murder weapon indicating an unplanned crime. But now we got another body and some semen, which suggests a wholly different scenario. Maybe a three-way, or maybe Rachel was doing a guy behind Olivia’s back.”

“Andrey Kaminski. He had access.”

Panda bobbed his head. “But no motive.”

I gnawed on that for a second. What could Andrey’s motive be? Money? Sex? Killing Rachel and Olivia wouldn’t give him more of either. “The only person I can think of who has one is Michael Rockwell. But why would Rachel sleep with him if they were divorcing?”

The mention of Michael’s name jogged Panda’s memory. “By the way, I asked about his alibi. Rockwell said he was on a train back to Connecticut.”

“Was he?”

“He bought the ticket. No way to know if he was actually on the train.”

“He couldn’t name a witness?”

“Not a one.”

“Is he a suspect?”

“Ask me that tomorrow. In the meantime, keep your distance from him. Send someone else to ask the questions this time.”

This was why Panda wanted to see me. The Globe-Trotter tip was just the bait. He could have told me earlier, or over the phone, but he’d held on to that little nugget to lure me to the park in person, so he could make sure I’d gotten the message about Rockwell.

He drained the rest of his Sprite. “I mean it, Shaw. Stay away.”

I left Panda in the park and returned to the Haverford, where our satellite truck had been joined by vans from every other major network, plus crews from the syndicated entertainment-news shows,
Extra
,
Inside Edition,
and
TMZ
. I even spotted a few reporters from the
Times
of London and the
International Herald Tribune
milling around the police barricade.

I wanted to stay to make sure everything went off as planned, but I was exhausted. I’d hit a wall and felt like I was going to collapse if I didn’t get home soon. I passed on to the crew what Panda had told me about Rachel’s body being stuffed into a suitcase, and put in another two calls to the bureau. One to Sabine, to ask her to find pictures of Globe-Trotter suitcases we could use on air; and one to Barton Oberlink, one of
Topical Tonight’s
guest bookers, to ask him to try to get hold of the Harts to book them for that night’s broadcast. Then I walked over to Lexington and called a 24-hour locksmith to come meet me at my apartment. It was one of those bright, brisk fall afternoons—nearly cloudless sky, golden sun, and the smell of sidewalk vendors roasting chestnuts in the air—that made living in a city like New York a real joy. But all I could think about was my bed, fresh sheets, and the shades drawn. I hailed a cab for home.

C
lick, click.

I heard a key scraping in the lock, the doorknob rattle.

“I had the locks changed,” I yelled from my bed, bolting up from my bed. “And I’m calling the police.”

I felt for my phone and dialed 911 as panic sluiced through my veins. The clock on my dresser read ten p.m. I’d been asleep for almost six hours. Not long enough, not by a long shot, but I had more immediate concerns at hand.

“Someone’s trying to break into my house,” I said into the phone. “My name is Clyde Shaw and I’ve been covering the Olivia Kravis murder investigation. Please send someone quick. Find Detective John Ehlers.” I gave my address and stayed on the line as I felt for the knife at the back of my nightstand.

A few years earlier, I’d produced a segment about a woman who had successfully fought off a rapist who’d attacked her in bed. The perp had already raped and killed three other women in her Indianapolis neighborhood and he would have done the same to her if she hadn’t been able to arm herself quickly. She stabbed him three times, twice in the shoulder and once in the neck, killing him almost instantly. Three days after my report aired, the knife arrived via FedEx with a note from my dad.
Just in case,
it read.

I sat down on the edge of my bed, knife in hand, and waited. Five minutes later, I heard pounding on my front door. “Police,” yelled a male voice from the other side. I slipped on a robe and looked through the peephole to confirm that it was indeed a pair of uniformed officers before I let them in. “Did you see anyone out there?” I asked.

The tall one looked at the blade in my trembling hand. “You mind putting that down, Ma’am?”

I put the knife down on the tiny table in my entryway and began to explain what had happened. The shorter officer unclipped his handheld transceiver from his belt. “I’ll check the perimeter.” He let himself out the front door as the tall officer told me to take a seat. “You sure you heard someone?”

I rubbed my temples, mentally spent. Had I dreamt it? Was this yet another hallucination? I didn’t think so, but I couldn’t be sure.

There was another knock on the door as Ehlers popped his head around the doorframe. “We seem to be making a habit of this,” he said to me, not unkindly.

I smiled, relieved that I’d gotten him instead of Restivo.

He took out his pen and notebook. “From the top, Miss Shaw.”

I repeated my story. Ehlers wrote everything down and told me they’d be keeping a unit outside my apartment building that night in case the perp came back. “I’m glad you changed the locks,” he said, closing his notebook.

I cinched my robe closed and studied him. “You look beat,” I told him. “You ever get any time off?”

“Probably as much as you do,” he replied, showing himself to the front door. “Call me if anything else happens.”

After the two patrolmen left, I bolted my door and went back to bed only to find that I was completely wired. I peeked outside my window and saw the squad car parked just outside, watching the front door to my building, but I still felt freaked-out. A pot of chamomile tea didn’t do much to calm my nerves, so I gave in to temptation and started checking the messages on my cell. There were forty. Most of them came from Georgia, Alex, and Jen. While I was asleep, the medical examiner had released Olivia’s preliminary autopsy—it wouldn’t be complete until the toxicology reports came in, and those would take at least another two weeks—and the ME had granted his first interview to GSBC, confirming Olivia’s manner of death as homicide and cause of death as bludgeoning. “
Whore-on-my-dick
managed to level another shocker,” Jen said on the voicemail she’d left me. “Rachel Rockwell was pregnant.”