The Craving (12 page)

“Why?” Geri said. “So we can waste more time?”

“It’s not a waste of time if he gets ID’d.”

Carlita Morales was here and they had four guys for the lineup so Geri figured,
Why not?

Carlita wasn’t happy to be at the precinct for the second time in two days, saying, “I gave you the sketch, why do I have to be here again? And on a Saturday morning? I could be home sleeping right now.”

Geri assured her that it would only take a few minutes and that none of the suspects would be able to see her. Of course Geri didn’t let on that she didn’t think there was a chance in hell that the suspect in the lineup was the shooter and all of this was, more than likely, a total waste of time.

A few minutes later Carlita, standing alongside Geri and Shawn, viewed the lineup. Geri gave her all the usual BS, about how to take a good look at each guy before reaching any conclusions. She was expecting Carlita to say that none of them looked familiar so she was surprised when she heard, “Wait, that guy right there.”

“Which guy?” Geri asked.

Carlita pointed at Arrojo. “That guy, second from the right.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.” Then she said, “Wait, I don’t know, he looks familiar, around the eyes, but I don’t know. I only saw him for a few seconds, maybe less. How’m I supposed to know?”

“Take another look,” Shawn said.

Seeming frustrated, Carlita stared at Arrojo for a good minute. Then she said, “I don’t know. Maybe. I can’t say for sure.”

“But at first you said it was him,” Geri said.

“So I changed my mind,” Carlita said. “What do you want me to do, lie to you?”

Shawn let out an agitated breath.

“Okay, thank you,” Geri said. “That’s all we need for right now.”

“For right now?” Carlita said. “What do you mean? I have to come back here?”

“Maybe,” Geri said.

“Yesterday you said all I had to do was give you a sketch,” Carlita said. “You didn’t say anything about having to ID anybody.”

“You’re our prime witness,” Geri said. “You’re our only witness. So until there’s an arrest in the case we’re
gonna need you to be at our disposal. You’ve just gotta be patient, that’s all. And you don’t have to worry, there’re cops outside your apartment twenty-four-seven, and it’s gonna stay that way till we get this guy. If you need a lift back to your apartment I’ll get somebody to drive you.”

Carlita said she wanted a lift, so they went back to near the entrance to the precinct where Officer Campo was still hanging around. Geri asked Campo to give Carlita a lift back home.

Campo didn’t seem thrilled. “I was actually about to go on break,” he said.

“Pick-a-Bagel can wait,” Geri said.

Geri went into Shawn’s office and said to him, “So what you think? Do we let Arrojo go or do we requestion him?”

“I would love to get this case wrapped up so I can get back to watching my college football games this afternoon,” Shawn said, “but I don’t see what we have to go on except that he has bushy eyebrows and drives an economy car. But I think we’ve got ourselves a bigger problem.”

“Carlita,” Geri said.

“What happens when we make an arrest and get her in court? She’ll be like, ‘Naw, that’s not him. Wait, I made a mistake, it is him. Naw, I was right the first time.’”

“You think she’s playing us?”

“Honestly? No, I don’t,” Shawn said. “I wish she was. I wish she was just afraid, trying to get off helping us, but I don’t think that’s the case. I think she really doesn’t know what she saw.”

“I’ll tell Arrojo he can go,” Geri said. “I just hope we’re not releasing a computer salesman who moonlights as a hit man.”

“I don’t know about you,” Shawn said, “but I need somethin’ to eat or I’m gonna pass out.
And I’m not talking about diet food. I need some eggs, pancakes, waffles. Wanna hit a diner?”

“Already ate.” Geri had an idea. “But I’ll catch you back here when you’re done.”

T
he truth was, Geri hadn’t eaten since an early dinner yesterday and was starving, but she knew that Detective Mangel would be around now because she’d checked his schedule the other day. Figuring this would be a good time to chat with him in person about the other case that was gnawing at her, she drove to the 19th Precinct on East Sixty-seventh Street.

There was very little traffic, early on a Saturday morning, and she made it down and across town in about fifteen minutes. It turned out Mangel wasn’t in but was expected soon, so Geri had a chance to eat after all, grabbing a ham, egg, and cheese on a roll and a coffee at a deli around the corner from the precinct. She took it to go and ate New York City–style—while walking. When she was about to go back into the precinct she saw Mangel walking toward her along the sidewalk. She smiled and Mangel smiled back in a flirty way, obviously not recognizing her. He probably smiled at every good-looking woman who was twenty years younger than him whom he saw on the street.

When he got closer Geri asked, “Hey, how’s it going?”

Mangel was about thirty pounds overweight, bald—well,
he
probably didn’t think he was bald because his thin gray hair was combed over a big bald spot—and he had an extremely wide nose that almost looked fake. He still didn’t seem to know who Geri was because she saw his eyes shift down briefly as he zeroed in on her chest. She could see the tip of his tongue between his yellowed smoker’s teeth.

“Hello,”
Mangel said in his thick Bronx accent, his eyes finally shifting back upward.

“Rodriguez,” Geri said. “Manhattan North.”

Geri expected Mangel’s attitude to change, but nope; if anything this seemed to be more of a turn-on for him.

“Oh, so
you’re
Rodriguez,” he said, taking another long, very obvious look at her body. “I had no idea.”

“No idea, what?” Geri asked, though she knew exactly what he’d meant.

“Just no idea who you were,” he said. “I mean sometimes you hear a voice and you get a picture of somebody in your head and sometimes the voice doesn’t match the picture.”

Geri hated how he was talking down to her, especially since she was technically his superior officer, but she knew that demanding respect wouldn’t get her what she wanted, so she might as well play up the sex card.

“Well,” she said, “I hope I live up to the hype.”

“Oh yeah, you live up to it,” Mangel said. “You don’t gotta worry about that.”

Geri noticed Mangel’s thick gold wedding band, but this didn’t surprise her—most married cops were bigger hounds than the unmarried ones. Did he really think he had a chance to score with her? Yeah, probably.

“Sorry to just show up,” Geri said, “but you don’t seem comfortable talking on the phone.”

“Oh, sorry about that,” Mangel said. “Things have been crazy, you know how it is.”

“Yeah, I know,” Geri said, making lots of eye contact. “So you think we can just talk for a little bit while I’m finishing my coffee?”

“I’d like that,” he said, “but if it’s about the Olivia Becker missing-person
case, I told you pretty much all there is to tell.”

“Oh come on, just five minutes to get me up to date,” Geri said. “Most men wouldn’t complain about a chance to spend five minutes with me.”

She didn’t know how she was able to say all this without vomiting, but Mangel seemed to believe she was actually flirting with him.

“Well, I guess I’ve got five minutes,” he said.

They went into the precinct and down a hallway to his office. As they walked, Mangel was full of questions:
How come we never met before? How long have you been with Manhattan North? Do you live in the city?
Funny how Mangel was so interested in the details of her life. At the entrance to the office Mangel held out his arm and said, “After you.”

Geri knew he just wanted her to go in ahead of him so he could get a good look at her ass. She didn’t care—let him look. She even swung her hips in a more exaggerated way than she did normally, hoping it would give him an extra thrill and make him even more cooperative.

She sat across from his desk, and then he sat in his swivel chair and asked, “So, what can I do for you?”

“You can tell me where you are on the Olivia Becker case.”

“If there was any news, you would’ve heard it.”

“Come on, cut the crap,” Geri said. “I’m not moving in on the case, I’m not trying to steal your glory—like there’s any glory to be stolen. I just like closure with my cases, that’s just the way I am.”

Mangel let out a breath, then said, “Well, in this case I’m afraid there may never be closure.”

“No leads on the body?” Geri asked.

“Nada,”
Mangel said.

“I didn’t know you spoke Spanish so well,” Geri said, trying to keep the flirty mood alive.

“One of my many talents,” Mangel said, as if he thought he was winning her over.

Letting the eye contact linger, Geri asked, “So if there’s no body, why do you think it was suicide?”

“Her behavior,” Mangel said, twirling his wedding band. “She was definitely having some kind of breakdown. The day she disappeared she practically assaulted a client from Japan.”

“What do you mean
assaulted
?”

“Maybe assaulted is too strong a word,” Mangel said. “But she was coming on to him, trying to grab him. I’m telling you, it sounds like she was totally losing it mentally.”

“Did she talk about any plans to kill herself?”

“Not specifically, no.”

“What about her boyfriend, Michael Hartman?”

“What about him?”

“Did he have an alibi?”

“Yeah, he did. He was home that whole night.”

“Who vouched for him?”

“His father.”

Great
, Geri thought.
An alibi from a relative
. She saw Mangel’s eyes shift downward; he was obviously checking out her breasts.

Trying to act like she hadn’t noticed, she asked, “And you believed him?”

“Look,” Mangel said. “I’m with you, okay? A woman disappears, you check out the boyfriend, it’s detective work 101. I mean, it’s not like I gave Hartman a free pass. I agree there’s something freaky about the guy. He has those dark eyes, talks in a kinda funny way,
with some kind of accent. No doubt about it, he’s weird, but being weird isn’t a crime.”

“What about Olivia Becker’s friends?” Geri asked.

“What about them?” Mangel asked, getting distracted by a text or e-mail on his cell.

“Did Becker tell them she was unhappy or depressed?”

Mangel finished tapping out a reply, then said, “What?” as if he hadn’t heard her.

Geri was about to repeat the question when, as if her voice had bounced off a satellite dish and reached Mangel by delay, he said, “No, not at all. Just the opposite actually.”

“Opposite how?”

“Everyone said she’d been in a really good mood lately,” Mangel said. “Falling in love, going on about how happy she was with Hartman. But you know how it is—a lot of time what you see on the outside’s much different than what’s going on on the inside. Some people, they do a really good job of disguising themselves. Oh, but there was this one friend that told us something weird.
Weird
, there’s that word again.”

“What was so weird?” Geri asked.

“Well, she said she saw Olivia … change.”

“Change?”

“Into some kind of animal.”

Geri tried to absorb this, then said flatly, “Into some kind of animal.”

“I told you it was weird, right?” Mangel shook his head. “I swear I don’t know what these people are smoking. Maybe that’s it—there’s some new drug people’re on, some kind of hallucinogen. Crack and X are out so something’s gotta be next, right? Yeah, an animal, with teeth, claws, fur.”

“Fur?”

“
Fur.
That’s what she told us.
She said Olivia Becker turned into an animal and tried to attack her the day she disappeared.”

“Did she have a history of mental illness?”

“Who?” Mangel asked.

“The girl,” Geri said.

“What does it sound like to you?” Mangel was twirling his wedding band again. “Look, it’s obvious these people aren’t playing with a full deck. This girl needed some serious help and I hope she gets it.”

“What was the girl’s name?”

“Coles,” Mangel said. “Diane Coles. She was the last one to see Becker alive, so we questioned her extensively, but there was no reason to believe she had anything to do with Becker’s disappearance and she wasn’t exactly a credible witness.”

Just what Geri needed today—another noncredible witness. “You mind if I talk to her?”

Mangel gave her a look.