The Motive (52 page)

“I noticed it. As one notices things. I didn’t study it.”

“All right, then. So this evening you simply noticed Ms. D’Amiens’s walk?”

“Yes.”

Hardy heard a sound behind him, a dull thud. He guessed it was Rosen letting his hand fall in frustration to the table, but he didn’t dare slow down enough to turn and look. He didn’t know if Willis realized what he’d just said, but he was certain some members of the jury had.

“All right,” he said. “But let me ask you this. If you were looking at Ms. D’Amiens’s walk, how did you see her face?”

“I just,” he stammered. “I just saw it.”

“As she came abreast of where you stood in your bay window?”

“Yes.”

“Directly across the street?”

“Yes.”

“So you only saw her in profile?”

This stopped Willis for an instant. “Yes,” he said with a resurging bravado. “Yes, I guess I must have, mustn’t I?”

“I believe so,” said Hardy. He wasn’t going to push on Willis any harder now. He’d already wounded him badly and the jury would resent him for it. Instead, he took a beat, a breath, then asked quietly. “Mr. Willis, your bay window is on Steiner Street, facing due west, is that true?”

“Yes.”

“So it faces the sun as it sets, right?”

“Yes.”

“And the sun was out on the day of the fire, correct?”

“Yes.”

“Low in the sky, since it must have been at least seven fifteen and possibly as late as seven forty-five when the woman came out of Hanover’s house? Mr. Willis,” Hardy continued, “to review for the jury, you saw a woman whom you initially took to be Missy D’Amiens leave the Hanover home at around seven thirty. You saw her again in profile only across the street from your bay window, looking directly into a setting sun, in the course of which you were in the middle of an alcoholic beverage made with two shots of spirits and one of fortified wine. Is all of this correct?”

“Yes,” Willis said. “As far as it goes.”

“I think it goes pretty far, sir,” Hardy said. He turned
and walked back to his table and sat down next to Catherine, who reached over and gripped his arm.

“Redirect, Mr. Rosen,” Braun intoned. “No? All right, Mr. Willis, you’re excused.”

In Farrell’s office, Hardy was prepared to beg if need be. “Wes, I need this.”

“You needed her missing alibi, too, Diz. Which I duti-fully provided, if you recall. But even assuming the lovely Theresa Hanover would see me again…”

“I thought she had a crush on you.”

“I may have overstated that slightly. But as I say, even if she would see me again, Sam and I have a date tonight.”

“You have no children. You can have dates every night.”

“We do, in fact. And every one a treasure. But this one is actually planned. We’ve got reservations with some pals at Farallon.”

Hardy grimaced. And Farrell, horizontal with a legal brief open on his chest up until now, straightened up on the couch with a deep, theatrical sigh. “For informational purposes only, what do you want to know this time?”

“How much she knew about Missy D’Amiens. If she ever dug to find any dirt on her. If she might have been blackmailing her.”

Farrell nodded. “Just the kind of stuff I might easily work into a casual conversation. You realize she’ll understand pretty quick what’s going on? Didn’t the cops ask her any of this?”

“Cuneo didn’t, no.”

“And you expect me to find this out in a couple of hours?”

“Sooner if you want to make your dinner.”

“How do I do that?”

“Your usual, Wes. Charm, brains, psychology. Whatever it takes.”

“You really think she did this?”

“I really think it’s not impossible. I’d like to have some kind of song I can get the jury to dance to.”

Farrell threw his abandoned brief down onto the floor at his feet. He swore in resignation, then looked up at Hardy. “All right, I’ll give her a call.”

“Thank you. And do me one other favor, would you?”

“Of course. It goes without saying. I live to perform favors for all and sundry. What is it?”

“Be careful.”

T
he money got Glitsky nowhere. The Social Security number, or SSN, turned out to be valid, although inactive because of the death of the person to whom it was issued.

He’d spent three hours with Lisa Ravel and learned that Missy D’Amiens was a careful and perhaps sophisticated money mover—over a twenty-odd-month period, and with the exception of the straight pass-throughs of large sums to Leymar Construction, she had never moved a sum of money, either to cash or to another account, greater than ten thousand dollars. Occasionally, when the balance in her checking account wouldn’t be completely depleted before the next deposit was due, she would withdraw all the cash down to a few hundred dollars, and sometimes this would be as much as four thousand more dollars destined for her safe-deposit box. In all, Glitsky’s rudimentary math revealed that she might have squirreled away nearly four hundred thousand dollars.

And that meant that, for at least a few days before she died, she’d had access to that much money in cash. Maybe she’d even carried it with her, on her person, somewhere—in a backpack, a briefcase, a shopping bag. If the wrong person even caught a glimpse, then this, Glitsky knew, was plenty to get yourself killed over. What he didn’t know and couldn’t figure out was why, other than Hardy’s theory that she had been planning to leave Paul Hanover, she’d withdrawn it just when she had. He was beginning to think it had to be some sort of blackmail. A payoff had gone wrong in the Hanover home, and the witnesses/victims hadn’t survived.

Coincidence, he believed, was not an option.

But there was something he’d clearly overlooked and
that now beckoned as the next, maybe the only, logical step left for him to take, although the specific destination remained murky. Why did he care so much about Missy D’Amiens? Was it just a desire to prove that Cuneo had been wrong all along? Or was it that his gene for justice wasn’t being served? He kept discovering more facts about her, only to learn that in some ways he seemed to know less. But he couldn’t stop himself. All of this money, her so-phistication, the duplicity about where and whether she worked, her exotic and unknown background—all of these factors contributed to the fascination. She was the key to something significant; he was certain of that. Maybe it wasn’t the key to her own murder as well, but her story begged for a resolution, and Glitsky felt that if he could provide one, it might help to close a circle for him as well.

And, not incidentally, though he couldn’t predict exactly how, he believed it might have an impact on Hardy’s trial.

He called Paganucci while he waited for Lisa Ravel to finish her xeroxing, then thanked her for her time and expertise. When he exited the building, his driver was waiting on the Kearny Street side, heading downtown. Even with the late-afternoon rush hour, it didn’t take them fifteen minutes to get back to the Tow/Hold headquarters a few blocks south of the Hall of Justice on Townshend.

A large brownish brick warehouse that now screamed desertion—from the street the place looked as though it hadn’t seen any sign of life in a decade. The large auto bay doors were closed at both the front and sides. Several windows, high up, on all three visible sides, were broken black, jagged holes, and the others, covered with cobwebs, dust and soot, were opaque. Paganucci pulled up in front of the entrance with its peeling white paint and faded logo and lettering. He put the car in park, turned it off, got out and opened Glitsky’s door to the gritty and wet wind.

Much to Glitsky’s surprise, the door was open. He entered and turned into the administrative office that had been drywalled into the semblance of a planned room. A dozen or so gray metal desks squatted in the bullpen behind the counter. The tops of each of them were bare except for a computer terminal, a telephone, a blotter and a two-tiered metallic in/out basket. He saw no one, but heard
a radio somewhere, and walked by the counter, then behind it, following the sound. Within the larger office, a smaller unit sulked in one corner, and here Glitsky found two slightly beyond-middle-aged men playing cards—it looked like gin rummy—on another desktop, this one completely bare.

“Who’s winning?” he asked.

The fat man facing him raised his eyes and showed no surprise at the sight of a large uniformed black police officer filling his doorway. “Glen,” he said, his breath rasping with the exertion. “But not for long.”

“Ha!” Glen didn’t even turn around to look.

Glitsky stepped into the room. “I’m trying to locate a car.”

“Got a license for it?”

“Yes.”

“Welp.” The fat man put a “p” on the end of his “well,” punctuating it further with a little pop of breath, as though the syllable had nearly exhausted him. He placed his cards facedown in front of him. Wheezing, he lifted himself out of his chair, squeezed his way out from behind the desk. He extended a hand as he passed, said, “Horace” and kept going into the outer office. “Stay here, you don’t mind. Watch him he don’t cheat,” he said.

“Ha!” Glen said again.

Horace got himself situated behind one of the outer desks, fiddled with the mouse, waited for the screen to brighten. “What’s the number?”

Glitsky gave it to him. 4MDC433.

Horace’s fingers moved. He waited, staring at the screen, each labored breath the sigh of a bellows. After a bit, he nodded. “Yep. Mercedes C-130?”

“That’s it.”

“Your lucky day,” he said. “They took it here. Space N-49. Your car?”

“No. A crime victim’s.”

Horace made a sympathetic clucking sound through the rasping. He leaned in closer and squinted at the screen. “Mitchell Damien? He okay?”

“She,” Glitsky said. “And she’s dead.”

From the other room. “Hey, Horace! You playing or what?”

“I’m
what
is what. Keep your pants on.” He shook his head in displeasure at his opponent’s impatience, then came back to Glitsky. “Welp”—a deep breath—“so what do you want with the car?”

“I just want to look at it. See if she left anything in it that might identify her killer.” He left the doorway of the smaller room and got close enough to Horace where he could see the screen. “Does it say where you picked it up?”

“Sure. Two hundred block of Eleventh Avenue.”

“That’s where she lived.”

“There you go.” Horace leaned back, ran a hand around his florid face. “There’s nothing in it—that don’t mean nobody stole nothin’. Means there wasn’t nothing in it when it got here.”

“Okay,” Glitsky said. “Could I trouble you to print out a copy of the record for me?”

“Sure. Take two seconds.”

For whatever good it would do, Glitsky thought. Already today, he had added sixty-some pages of Bank of America records to the D’Amiens folder he’d been developing. Just being thorough. But it would be foolish to abandon the practice now.

Horace pulled the page from the printer by the counter and handed it over. Taking Glitsky’s measure one last time and seemingly satisfied, he walked with great effort all the way back across the outer office, to a large white panel, about six feet on a side, that swung out to reveal a numbered grid of eye-hooks, most of which held sets of keys. He picked the one off of N-49, walked back and handed it to Glitsky.

“You’ve got the keys?” Glitsky asked. “She left her keys in the car?”

“No. Car sits in the lot this long unclaimed, generally it’s going to auction, so we need keys. We used to have a couple of locksmiths on staff, even, but those days are gone now. Still”—he pointed—“those ought to open the thing up. It’s inside, about two-thirds of the way back. They’re numbered. You can’t miss it. I’ll flick on the lights for you. Bring the key back when you’re done. I’m off at five thirty, so before then. Or come back tomorrow.”

Glitsky looked at his watch. He had forty-five minutes. “Today ought to do it,” he said. “Thanks.”

“What if he doesn’t call her as a witness?” Glitsky, referring to Theresa Hanover, was in Hardy’s office throwing his darts. Hardy, weary but still rushing with adrenaline and elation—he thought he’d basically kicked ass with all of the eyewitnesses—sat crossways on the love seat per-pendicular to his desk.