Full Frontal Murder (19 page)

Marian nodded; she and Captain Murtaugh both had already more or less discounted Dorian Yates as a viable suspect. He
had
been set up to take the fall for the real killer, a new scapegoat brought in at the eleventh hour to divert the police into a false line of investigation. But the setup itself had too many holes in it; the plan smacked of haste, of desperation. Maybe the police were closer to the truth than they realized?

“What about Bradford Ushton's letterhead stationery? Did O'Toole get a sample?”

“Oh … yeah, he did. And it's not the same as the letterhead on that letter Rita Galloway got about Hugh promising the kid to Ushton. The killer just went to a printer and had something official looking made up. After all that news coverage, Ushton made a good boogeyman.”

“All right,” she said. “Let's waste no more time on Dorian Yates. Take him into Rita's interrogation room and let him be a defense attorney instead of a suspect.”

Dowd grinned. “He don't wanna. He's a divorce lawyer, Lieutenant, he don't know beans about defending a homicide. He says the best thing he can do for Rita Galloway is find her a good criminal attorney.”

“Then tell him to find her one fast. We can't get her to sign a statement until she has legal counsel. And I want you to check the messenger service that delivered those envelopes to Rita. It's probably another dead end, but check it out anyway. Where's Walker?”

“In the can.”

“Get him and tell him to look in Rita's room at her brother's place for those other envelopes she received. He won't need a warrant—Fairchild will cooperate.”

“Right.” He hesitated a moment and then asked, “Are we getting close, Lieutenant?”

“I think we may be.” Dowd gave a grunt of satisfaction and left.

Marian turned her attention back to the interrogation room. Perlmutter and O'Toole had finished with the accusatory part of their questioning and were now trying to elicit from Rita every detail of the matter she could think of, whether it proved relevant or not. Rita herself looked on the point of exhaustion, but she was still making an effort to give her questioners what they wanted. Marian didn't like feeling sorry for murderers, but she was beginning to feel sorry for Rita Galloway.

“Much better this time,” Holland said later as he clicked off the eleven o'clock news. “You looked preoccupied with your case and not worried about the impression you were making on the reporters, as if giving them their news was only a small courtesy you were observing. Which is the only way to treat those people. You spoke with authority and to the point. You're getting the hang of it.”

Marian groaned. She'd stretched out on her stomach across Holland's lap to watch the news. “I resented the time it took to tell them even that little bit. I wanted to get back to Rita's interrogation.”

“But you did your duty like a good little cop.”

“‘A good little cop'?” She bit his knee. “Don't you call me a
good little cop
.”

“I will if it makes you nibble on my knees. Hey! Ouch!”

Detective Walker had found three envelopes in Rita's room at Alec Fairchild's apartment. One was a “report” alleging Hugh dallied with prostitutes. Another claimed he was free-basing cocaine. The third purported to be some kind of bank report showing Hugh was diverting money from Bobby's educational trust fund to the account of a woman Hugh was supposedly setting up in a luxury apartment. But even that failed to stir Rita to action.

It was only when the papers broke the story of Bradford Ushton's arrest on a charge of child molestation that the killer had hit on the one thing that would send Rita off on her murderous mission.

Detective Dowd had had to track down the day manager of the messenger service, but he came back with some answers. The first three envelopes had been brought in by Julia Ortega, using her own name. The fourth and fatal one had arrived by ordinary U.S. Mail, with a twenty enclosed to pay for the messenger's delivery. The manager said it wasn't his place to wonder why the sender hadn't just mailed the envelope straight to the addressee.

Marian said, “Murtaugh thinks the killer is a disgruntled lover who set out to destroy the Galloways' marriage and then got in over his head and had to kill to protect himself. But the only lover Rita admits to has been living in Seattle since last year.”

“I imagine he's heard of airplanes,” Holland remarked.

“Yeah, I'll have to check that tomorrow. I suppose it's
possible
to engineer a kidnapping and a firebombing and two murders—three, counting Hugh's—all the way from the other side of the country. But I don't believe it. No, our killer's right here in New York.”

“So it isn't Rita's lover.”

“Or else she has another lover she hasn't told us about.” Marian reached over and turned out the light. “Frankly, I'd just like to forget about all of them for a while, all the Galloways and Julia Ortega and poor dumb Nickie Atlay. I don't want to do anything but sleep.”

“Aw,” said Holland.

The next day she phoned the Seattle police and asked their help in tracking down Rita Galloway's former lover. The return call came less than half an hour later. The man she was asking about had been hit by some collapsing scaffolding at a construction site and had been in a coma for the past two weeks.

“Well, you can't beat that for an alibi,” Captain Murtaugh commented when she told him. “But maybe Rita Galloway tossed us a past lover to keep us from looking for a present one.”

“I'll put Perlmutter and O'Toole on it,” Marian said, “but I think she was telling us the truth, that the man in Seattle was the only lover she had. She's trying to atone, Jim. I don't think she really regrets Hugh's death, but she does regret killing him.”

“A fine distinction. I wonder if the jury will be impressed.” He cocked an eye at her. “You don't think it's a lover, do you?”

She made a vague gesture with both hands. “I think it's a very reasonable explanation …
if
we find Rita has been holding out on us. If she does have another lover tucked away somewhere, he'll be our suspect, all right. But right now I'm more worried about what the killer will do next.”

Murtaugh scowled. “He's not finished?”

“Well, look at all the elaborate plans he's made to keep his identity hidden. He did his dirty deeds through Nickie Atlay and Julia Ortega and then got rid of them before they could become a problem. Next Bradford Ushton appears on the scene—although I don't see how the killer could have had a hand in that. But then when Rita shot Hugh, we were supposed to think she was behind everything that's happened. And if that didn't work, he had a backup plan in place that would hand us her lawyer—Dorian Yates—as the big bad killer. So what happens? Last night I go on television and say the case is
not
closed. You think he's going to let it rest there? No, he'll try something more. He has to. He can't leave it alone.”

The captain swore. “That,” he said heavily, “is bad. But how much further can he go without making a slip? He must be getting desperate by now.”

“I wonder. At first I thought all that rigamarole about sending those false reports to Rita was an act of desperation. But now I'm not so sure.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning I think he's enjoying himself.”

He looked at her gloomily. “You don't know how
much
I hope you're wrong.”

Marian sighed. “Me too. But he's committed two murders and manipulated a third … and got away with all three. He must be feeling pretty pleased with himself along about now.”

“The lists of possible suspects that Hugh and Rita drew up—anything there?”

“Not yet. Walker and Dowd have eliminated only one name so far, a man who was out of the country when Nickie Atlay was killed. They're still working on it.”

“Dammit, we need a line on him!” Murtaugh growled. “Before he does something else.”

But it was not to be. At eleven o'clock Marian got a call from Annie Plaxton in Hoboken, saying her laundromat had been firebombed.

19

Holland wrapped up an informal meeting with the two investigators he'd assigned to a fugitive case, an embezzler whom they were tracking electronically through the movement of the money he'd stolen. The embezzler had gone about it the right way, siphoning off relatively small amounts at a time and transferring the funds to new accounts, which he kept moving from bank to bank all over the world. But now two of the accounts had come together in one bank in Mexico City; the embezzler was running short of cash. If he drew upon the Mexico City account, they had him.

On his way back to his office, Holland paused to look in on André Flood. The faint sound of hard rock leaked out of the earphones the young man wore as he worked. André had not taken the full week Holland had given him to decide whether he wanted to stay with Chris Carnell or not; he'd resigned at the end of the first day.

In the reception area, Mrs. Grainger was signing for a package. “This is for you, Mr. Holland.”

It was an ordinary mailing bag. Holland took it into his office and pulled the tab on the back: a videotape, no label. He slipped the cassette into the VCR.

And found himself watching Marian. Getting out of her car somewhere in Manhattan. Looking in a store window. One brief shot of her having lunch with Gloria Sanchez. Standing in front of the station talking to Murtaugh. Picking up her dry cleaning. The picture wobbled once in a while and occasionally the top of Marian's head was cut off; but the camera must have had an autofocus feature because the images were crisp and clear. Marian was wearing different clothing in the various vignettes, so the tape must have been made over a series of days.

Holland felt a vein pulsing in his temple.
Marian was being stalked
.

Then Holland was looking at himself. It started with a long shot of the two of them at the outdoor café near Lincoln Center where they'd gone for lunch on Saturday. Then the camera zoomed in on Marian talking on her phone. The lens moved over to Holland, showing him slowly savoring his food as he watched Marian. Whoever had done the taping had followed them into the park, capturing them watching the mime and then, a little later, in a more intimate moment when they thought they were alone.

The last pictures were of Marian coming out of the Galloway Building and telling the reporters gathered at the entrance that there would be no statement until the next of kin had been notified.

Then, after a break, the camera lingered on what looked like a large poster board with a message stenciled on it:
If you want to see her alive again, you're going to have to do something for me. Something big. Take the subway to Coney Island, this afternoon. Do not drive your car, do not take a cab. Be there by five o'clock. Go to The Hurricane and wait by the entrance. If you are not alone, she's dead
.

Holland whipped around and grabbed the phone. He called Midtown South and asked for the captain. “Murtaugh, it's Holland. Where's Marian?
Right this very minute.”

“This very minute? On her way to Hoboken. She left about ten minutes ago. What—”

Holland broke the connection and punched out Marian's cell phone number. He got a recorded voice telling him the number he was trying to reach was temporarily outside the service area.

But that was the standard recording used whenever there was no answer; it could mean anything from a dead battery to to a sabotaged handset. And if Marian had left Midtown South only ten minutes ago, she wouldn't have had time to reach one of the tunnels yet; she'd still be inside the service area.

He called Murtaugh back. “Call out your troops—there still may be time to stop it.”

“Stop what?”

“Stop Marian from being abducted,” he said.

The two men stood in Holland's office watching the tape. The patrol cars Murtaugh had dispatched to the entrances of both the Lincoln Tunnel and the Holland Tunnel had failed to spot Marian's car. A phone call to the Hoboken police confirmed that she'd not showed up at Annie Plaxton's laundromat on Meegat Street.

They'd been too late.

“You can't go meet him alone,” Murtaugh said when the tape had finished.

“Of course I have to go alone,” Holland snapped. “The only reason I called you was that there was still a chance of preventing the abduction. But from this point on, the police are out of it.”

The captain shot him an odd look. “Do you really think we're going to step aside because you say so? She may be your Marian, but she's also my lieutenant. I want you wearing a wire—”

“That's the first thing he'd look for. He's not sloppy—he's been planning this for a while. That tape covers several days.”

“All the more reason to proceed with caution. But all right, no wire—you may be right. We'll have police inside the booths all the way to the entrance to The Hurricane.”

Holland shook his head. “It's a long ride to Coney Island, even on the subway. There's no time to set something up even if that were the right way to go about it.”

“I've already set it up. The minute you told me what was on this tape. They're on their way now.”

Holland flared. “Just what we need—a bunch of heavy-handed cops spooking this guy before we find out where Marian is!”

“Give us some credit,” Murtaugh answered mildly. “They know not to reveal themselves. And they'll follow him after the meet, whether he drives or takes a cab or rides the subway. We'll get him and find Marian both.”

“It's too risky,” Holland argued. “Let me meet him and find out what it is he wants me to do. That alone will give us a clue to his identity. And there's always the chance that I already know him.”

“What's risky is your going in without backup. This is a police operation now, Holland, and we're going to do it by the book.” He popped the tape out of the VCR and slipped it into his jacket pocket. “Just keep in mind that once you leave the subway station, you'll never be out of sight of the police all the way to the roller coaster.”