Vendetta (15 page)

How much does Claudia McEvers know about the Windsors?
Cat pondered.
And why is she working for the DeMarcos now? What was she warning us about, and why is Angelo giving her money?

“I don’t see anything that ties her to Angelo,” Cat said. “Let’s go back into his financials.”

Tess angled her neck left and right and made grumpy noises.

“Are you okay?” Cat asked her, and Tess scrunched up her face.

“I have a crick in my neck. I’m not used to sharing a bed all night.”

“‘All night?’” Cat peered up at her. “
All night?”

“Don’t get excited,” Tess muttered. “He was hyper when I got there and I figured he was, y’know, scared because of the blackout. Then I told him about the hacked security system at the DeMarcos and that
really
set him off. He wanted to theorize about it for
ever and
he had to go teach a class at the crack of dawn. So it hardly qualifies as a real all-nighter.”

Cat considered. “Did you take a shower?”

Tess nodded. Cat dimpled and looked back at the screen.

“A shower defines it as an all-nighter.”

“It so doesn’t.” Then she grinned. “But does bringing me the world’s most wretched coffee in bed?”

“
Yes
. Coffee in bed means there is no getting around it. You had an all-nighter.”

Tess covered her eyes. “It’s so embarrassing. I don’t understand this at all. He’s such a
nerd
. Oh, my God, Cat, he eats Cheetos and gummi worms!”

“Smart is hot. And J.T. is brilliant. Plus he’s forthright. He wasn’t afraid to come right out and ask you how you felt about him.”

“I’m still not exactly sure how I do feel,” Tess murmured. “I mean, when I think about it, I’m all ‘wait,
what?
’”

“With you and J.T., it’s not about what you
think
about him. It’s how you
feel
about him,” Cat said.

Tess considered that. Then she said, “Plus, when I think about
him
, I mean, just
him
, not questioning the relationship or what it means or where we’re going…” She nodded in Cat’s direction and the smile was back, accessorized with sparkling eyes. “You’re right. Smart is hot. And he’s supersmart.”

“I get that.” Cat was loving Tess’s happy confusion. “Enjoy it, Tess. You’ve been through a lot. Knowing I was hiding something, the disappointment over Joe, plus, at base level, it can be hard for cops to find people who aren’t cops who accept what we do. J.T. totally accepts it.”

“He does, huh,” Tess said thoughtfully. Then she stirred herself. “Okay, well, enough about my love life. Let’s get back to doing what we do. So J.T. said that if he could talk to Bailey Hart he might be able to reverse-engineer the system to figure out how the kidnappers hacked into it.”

“I’m sure Robertson and Gonzales would just jump at that offer,” Cat said sarcastically. “And I’d be concerned that we’d be putting J.T. on the radar of people who shouldn’t know that he hacks into the Homeland Security surveillance system for us.”

“I thought the same thing. So I got him to give me a list of questions to ask,” Tess said proudly.

“That’s great. And very hot.” She grinned and looked through her notes. “Here’s the number to reach Hart.”

Tess punched it in. Waited. Waited some more. Said, “Hello, Mr. Hart. This is Detective Vargas. We have a few more questions to ask you. Please call me back.”

She hung up and they looked at each other. Cat tapped her fingers against her bottom lip. “Okay, say you’re in charge of the last line of security for a crime lord’s home and his son’s been kidnapped because your system failed. Do you not answer your phone?”

“Maybe not if your boss has told you not to. Maybe if he has told you that you need to do nothing but work on your system.” Tess frowned. “Except, what’s that saying? ‘The barn door’s shut after the horse has bolted?’ I mean, the kid’s been taken.”

Cat considered. “I’m sure DeMarco’s fearing for his own safety. And his wife’s. He’s probably got a thousand enemies. He must be afraid that if word gets out, he’ll be vulnerable.”

“Speaking of the wife, Sleazy Pickin’s,” Tess said. “We didn’t go. We’re missing out on bargains on crotchless underwear.”

Cat mock-shuddered. “And the good news is? That case will still be there once we clear this one.” The caseload of NYPD detectives was staggering.

“If something has happened to Hart, we might never know it,” Cat mused. “Unless we specifically develop him as a case.”

“I hate to say it, but he’s not our subject at the moment.”

“Then we need to clear the case we’re on,” Cat said decisively. “What’s the next item on Angelo’s expenses?” She scrolled down.

“Well, speaking of Maple Studios,” Tess said, pointing to the next line on the screen, “he paid for time about a month ago, just like your career counselor said. With a check he wrote himself.” She sat back. “So it’s doubtful those payments he made to Claudia McEvers were for studio time.”

Cat used a pencil to tap the next item. “He paid for flowers to be delivered to Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx. We haven’t established his mother’s status. Alive, dead, missing?”

They tried to find out the delivery instructions for the flowers but both the florist and the cemetery refused to give out details. They put in for a warrant and while they were waiting to see if they were going to get it, they discovered that they couldn’t locate a death certificate for Angelo’s mother, who, they discovered by reading old Page Six entries, was, or had been, named Angelica. They also could not find a dissolution of marriage, which put Tony DeMarco’s marriage to Hallie in question.

“What if the mom’s alive? Maybe she snatched him,” Cat suggested. “He’s almost twenty-one. A legal adult. Could be there’s an inheritance.”

“Or a statute of limitations on some capital offense she committed,” Tess mused. “Maybe she went into hiding.” She blew air out of her cheeks. “You know, Cat, it looks like Tony DeMarco can redact anything he feels like. Public records should be available to us for inspection. You could make an argument for obstruction of justice.”

“Could and won’t, just yet,” Cat said.

“Chandler,” said Captain Ward, walking up to Cat’s desk. “Internal Affairs is waiting for you. They have a couple of questions.”

Tess went bug-eyed and Cat’s heart stuttered.

My father’s escape
, Cat thought.
Here we go.

“They just said they had to go over a few things,” he said.

“And you asked them for clarification, right?” Tess said.

Ward eyed her coldly. “I’m sure Detective Chandler will do fine. He’s in Interview Room A.”

He
, Cat thought.
Please don’t let it be Agent Hendricks.

“And so is our union rep, right? In Interview Room A?” Tess said as Cat fought for composure. “And you’ll be there too? Sitting right beside your officer? ADA Lowan was there when he ran the precinct.”

“It might not be your best move to remind me that Detective Chandler has been under scrutiny before,” Captain Ward advised Tess.

“But you’re her captain,” Tess said angrily. “This is our house. You’re supposed to back her up.
All
of us. ”

He flushed but said nothing. Cat wondered if he had been warned not to interfere, and that chilled her to the bone.

“Justus Zilpho,” Tess shot back. “Ours. We are your stars.”

“And it takes a village to convict a murderer,” Ward retorted. He gazed down expectantly at Cat. “I wouldn’t keep him waiting.”

He moved away and Tess said under her breath, “I can’t believe he’s not going in there with you. Where’s your backup?”

Cat rose and smoothed her white shirt. She put on the black jacket she had slung over her chair. She added some lip-gloss and wished fervently that she weren’t swimming in exhaustion. She reminded herself that she had lied to IA before to protect herself and Vincent and she had withstood the pressure of a subsequent cross-examination. She was a detective, so she was used to developing the narrative of a case and following it through the myriad false leads and distractions that inevitably arose. She would be able to anticipate where Hendricks was trying to go and if it was the wrong place, she could block him.

Or try to.

“If it’s Hendricks, I’ll just bite down on the cyanide capsule,” she told Tess.

Tess smiled. “That’s the spirit.”

Cat could tell by the way the other detectives and unis were shuffling away from her in the bullpen that they knew what was going on. Maryann, one of the civilian secretaries, flashed her a good-luck smile and Cat made a note to buy her some candy on Administrative Assistants Day. She pushed open the door to Interview A—

—and there he was. FBI Agent Hendricks, with his video camera and his case file and his smug, smug smile.

“Good afternoon, Detective Chandler.”

“Good afternoon, Agent Hendricks.” She looked around. “No union rep.”

“She said she was tied up in traffic. We can wait. I understand, however, that you and your partner are involved in a high-profile kidnapping case. Time being of the essence, perhaps your captain might feel the need to hand it off to another team?”

I hate you
, Cat thought. She was cornered. The reasonable thing to do would be to wait for her union rep and let the case go. It was a bad case anyway.

Except that Curt Windsor was at least peripherally involved, and her boyfriend was wanted for his murder, and if she stayed on the case, she could monitor the information arising from the DeMarco investigation and feed it back to Vincent.

“I reserve the right to stop this interview if I feel that I need to consult with my rep,” she said.

Hendricks looked like a very full cat with canary feathers sticking out of his mouth. Alarm bells went off and she nearly announced that she wanted to stop right now. But she also wanted to know what he had on her. Correction: What he
thought
he had on her.

He pressed a switch, and the digital recorder blinked red to let her know that it was recording her. They went through the preliminaries and then he began his witch-hunt.

“You went to Rosie’s Bar early last night to celebrate a conviction,” he said.

“Yes.”
Oh, for God’s sake, he’s not going to write me up for drinking and then coming in to work the blackout, is he?

“And then you met a confederate outside Rikers to prep for your father’s escape.”

Her mouth dropped open. “
What?
”

With an air of satisfaction, he flipped open the case folder on the desk and slid a photograph toward her. It was a picture of her talking to a C.I. from at least six months ago, but it
was
in front of Rikers. The picture was grainy black and white, grabbed off security footage, and her C.I.’s face was away from the camera. She was glad of that, because he had risked a lot to come to her with information about gang activity.

The date and time stamp on it indicated that it was recorded at 11 p.m. last night. She had been in bed with Vincent at 11 p.m., but of course she couldn’t say that.

“I wasn’t there last night. This has been doctored.” He started to take it back and she kept her hand on it. She felt as if she were tumbling end over end in blackest space. IA would have checked and double-checked their sources. “Who gave you this?”

“We received it directly from Rikers surveillance.”

“Who?” she repeated. “I want to see the report.”

“I’m not authorized—”

“We’re done.” She rose.

“Then you’re off DeMarco. And suspended. I believe you know the routine.”

Damn it
, she thought, and sat back down. “There is no way I was at Rikers last night. You know my father is former FBI, and that he was in charge of a
lot
of spooky stuff. I have absolutely no motive for helping him escape from prison.”

“We’re not certain if he escaped or was abducted.”

“But you’re certain, based on a picture of me with one of my C.I.s, that I participated.”

“A C.I., or one of the masked, armed men who broke open his cell and hustled him out?” he asked. “Perhaps if you give us his name and contact information, we can verify your story.”

“He is still in danger. And we gave him a bus ticket out of town. Six months ago.”
And I wouldn’t give him up anyway. Not to you.

“This raises serious questions,” Hendricks said, and Cat narrowed her eyes.

“This raises no questions. As I said, this has been tampered with. Second of all, even if I
had
been recorded at Rikers last night, there is no way to link me to my father’s disappearance.”

That last assertion was a fishing expedition, to see if he had more false evidence to smear her with. But he didn’t respond. He sat quietly. She glanced at the blinking red button. She was still being recorded.

“I drove straight home from Rosie’s,” she said. “You can check the GPS on my car. I also got a phone call from my captain—”

“—much later,” he finished for her. “Hours, in fact.”

She fought to stay civil. “If this is all you have, I’ll get back to my case. You wouldn’t want a concerned citizen to learn that the investigation of his son’s kidnapping was held up for frivolous reasons, would you?”

“Oh, this is anything but frivolous.” He reached forward and turned off the recorder. “I just wanted to give you a chance to come clean before it was too late.”

“Don’t threaten me,” Cat snapped. And she was snapping. She was pumped full of coffee, anger, and anxiety. She made a point of keeping the photo though she expected him to ask for it back. But he remained silent as she walked straight-backed out of the interview room.

Tess was waiting for her with a cup of coffee made just the way Cat liked it. She held it out to her and looked with concern at the way Cat’s hand trembled when she took the cup. Cat handed Tess the picture.

“I can’t provide an alibi,” she said simply, and slumped into her desk chair.

“This is ridiculous. Let me take this to J.T. Maybe he can figure out how to refute it.”

Cat nodded. “Tess, he was so
smug
. Like he had more on me.”