Havoc-on-Hudson (7 page)

19

I slowed my brisk walk down Manhattan’s Madison Avenue to a stroll and peered into the ornate entrance of the Carlyle Hotel. During my earlier career, as a model for the iconic fashion maven, Eleanor Lambert, I’d frequently lunched here with one of the designers who hired me either for their print ads or as a runway model. But that had been a lifetime ago, and I didn’t miss it. Café Carlyle now seemed stuffy and over-decorated to me, its fawning waiters obtrusive.

It was always restorative to get away from my hectic work schedule in Westchester, and so I tried to take a day for myself in the city whenever possible. A little window-shopping and perhaps a haircut at Vidal’s with Karin and then lunch at one of the charming restaurants on this fabulous Avenue. Urban life was so different from my everyday world, and just the break I needed.

Today, I’d chosen to take advantage of the beautiful weather to enjoy a meal at a sidewalk café. I settled in at a corner table at Le Paris Bistrot, where I could observe the passing crowd of chic women with designer handbags and five-inch stiletto heels. It was fun to pretend I was still one of them, living in that worldly fantasy, and then I jolted back to reality as I remembered my Ferragamos in the police lab with Amy Honeywell’s blood on them.

Oh, you’ve come a long way baby
, I thought. Sometimes I thought that was a good thing. Sometimes I wondered.

“May I help you, Madame,” asked the young French waiter. I ordered a Bellini and studied the menu. Soupe a L’oignon? La Salade Alsacienne? Les Escargot?

A long, black limo pulled up at an empty spot in front of the restaurant, and a stunning Latina woman emerged wearing a fox collar on a pale linen suit. Heading for the empty table directly in front of me, she told the waiter there would be two. Moments later the limo driver joined her, tall, well-built, silky black hair pulled tightly back into a man bun, looking as if he had just walked off the page of a Vogue advertisement. I wasn’t the only woman at Paris Bistrot who couldn’t help staring at this gorgeous man.
G
rrrr
.

Then the onion soup was delivered, and I turned my attention from the fabulous man to the fabulous meal. I was just finishing the last of my espresso when the neighboring couple got their check. I called for mine as well. The waiter’s attention, however, was on the woman as she climbed into the back of the limo. Her companion donned a cap and stepped into the driver’s seat. My curiosity got the best of me, and I asked the waiter if this unusual couple frequented the bistro.

“
Oui
,” He smiled broadly, as he wrote out my check. “Ze lady told me she was once Miss Caracas, and had been married to a famous racing car driver who crashed and died during a famous race in Monte Carlo.
Mon oncle
was there, and I heard all about it.
Tres tr
iste
.”

I added an extravagant tip to my check and scrawled my signature. “What about the gentleman she’s with?”

“Oh, he’s her driver and body guard, the lucky bastard!” he answered. Then he apologized for his language. “I think, if you ask me, he is also her lover; he can’t keep his hands off her.”

20

On a balmy blue morning in early September my desk phone rang. The readout,
HH Town Police
, surprised me. Chief Betsy had been keeping her distance.

I picked up the receiver. “Ye-e-e-s?”

“Hey, Maggie,” she greeted me, and then, never one to waste words, “may I buy you lunch?”

“I thought you didn’t want to have anything more to do with me, Chief? I thought you made that pretty clear—that I wasn’t to go anywhere near your case.”

A moment’s silence, then, “The Station Café. One o’clock. Yes? Or No?”

I covered the mouthpiece with the palm of my left hand. “Claire,” I called, “am I free for lunch?”

Claire clicked on her computer screen, brought up the master schedule for all things Mitty Realty. “You’ve got a showing on the Blake place at 2:30. Nothing till then.”

“Yes,” I said, and I hung up. Two could play the game.

The Station Café is a chic place on Water Street, just off of Main, a two-shift little restaurant near the Train Station, open from 6 a.m. (for the commuters’ coffees and croissants) to 10 p.m. for the Lobster Mac ‘n’ Cheese with Bourgone Blanc crowd. For Hudson Hills, The Station Café is the center of the universe; I don’t think I’ve ever walked into the place without meeting someone I know.

The Chief was sitting at a back table in the chair that faced the door, a cup of steaming black coffee at her place, a chilled glass of Pinot Grigio at mine. I slid into the chair. “Wine?” I commented. “And at lunch? I can’t wait to hear what you want from me.”

She sat tall and straight in her chair, curly dark hair pinned back at the sides with tortoise-shell barrettes, and fixed me with her blue gaze. “I won’t beat about the bush, Maggie. I need your help. Again.”

“Is that so?” I crossed my arms across my chest and leaned back in the chair. “What about all your concern for my safety?”

Her resonant voice was pitched low, but the words came across bell-clear to me. “We have an I.D. on the killer and his DNA matches several rapes in the New York City area.” The shapely lips twisted. “Interested now?” She turned to the young waitress who’d just approached the table, order pad at the ready. “I’ll have the Caesar Salad with salmon, please. And …” she gestured toward me, “whatever Ms. Mitty’s having, put it on my bill.”

“Are there anchovies in the salad?” I smiled at the girl. I knew Kelley Emerson and her family; as a matter of fact, I’d sold them their house when Kelly was still in diapers. She’d just this past May graduated from Mount Holyoke with a major in Art History. Looked like the job hunt wasn’t going well—September and she was still waiting tables.

“If you want there to be, Mrs. Mitty.” Kelley returned my smile. “Most people don’t.”

“Great. Caesar Salad then, anchovies, no salmon.” I’d been trying to look cool, uninterested, but now turned immediately back to the Chief. “Yes? Do tell.”

“Have some wine first.” She gestured toward the stemmed glass.

“I never drink at lunch,” I said. Which wasn’t really true, but I didn’t want her to think I was bribable.

“Okay. Your loss.” She shrugged. “The suspect’s name is Daniel Joseph Farrell. He’s known as Danny Joe,” She said it in that peculiar low-toned voice that carried only as far as she wanted it to. As far as my ears, that is. No nosy diners were going to learn one damn thing she didn’t want them to know.

The name meant nothing to me, but I shuddered anyhow. This was the name of a rapist and murderer. The killer of someone I’d known.

She lifted the white coffee mug, took a sip, replaced it precisely in the coffee stain ring on the lunchtime paper placemat. “Most of what I’m going to tell you is strictly for your ears alone. But I do need your help once again as liaison with the realty community, so I have to tell you more than I want you to tell them. You understand?” The blue gaze was straight and serious.

“Yes. I do.” I was over my snit.

“The authorities are not yet ready to release the name, so don’t tell anyone. But we have a photo. Here’s what I want you to do—show your colleagues the picture. Make it as low-key as possible. Then start talking about something else. Anything else. Got it?”

I nodded.

Daniel Joseph Farrell was an ex-con who’d fallen off the supervisory grid. After release from Juvenile Detention eight years earlier, he’d shown up at his parole board only once and had then seemingly vanished into thin air. But DNA from the murder scene had matched his juvvie records. Then it had matched the evidence from the rape across the river at Spring Valley and from the Hudson Hill’s rape and murder of Amy Honeywell. He was still out there, somewhere, clearly not too far away.

Still out there. Still a menace, I thought. First I felt fear, and then the wave of anger washed over me again. Anger won out. Another Josh Gagliardi. Oh! I’d been such a young girl. So defenseless. He’d seen me as easy prey.

This guy’s victims, this Farrell creep’s prey, were different. They were mature, professional women, but their victimhood was nonetheless tragic, nonetheless infuriating. I was angry now for their sake, was still committed to doing whatever the Chief needed me to do in order to bring him to justice.

But really, what she wanted me to do wasn’t much. I was to do NO investigation, she said. I was simply to liaise, to take the photograph of Danny Joe Farrell around from one real-estate agent to the next, inform them that a man approximating this description was a person of interest in the attacks on brokers. That they should be on the lookout for such a man. That they should take precautions, and that any such individual should be reported immediately to the authorities.

“I’m asking you to do it this way,” she said, peering at me over the rim of her coffee mug, “because I don’t want anything to end up on paper or on the Internet. This guy is one smart cookie, and I don’t want to risk the possibility that he’s gonna stumble across it online. But, on the other hand, our little Danny Joe’s a loner. He’s not about to go around talking to people, so word of mouth won’t be a problem. Will you do this for us?”

And that was all she wanted me to do. Just show the picture around. No names. No pack drill. Whatever that means.

“So, you do have a picture of the suspect?” My eyes were wide. I half expected him to look exactly like Josh Gagliardi.

She reached for her briefcase on the seat beside her, pulled out a nine-by-twelve manila envelope, removed a large photograph from the envelope and slid it across the table to me. It was a mug shot, but it looked like a picture from a high-school yearbook. A dark-haired young man still in his teens stared out at me, his eyes challenging. He was a good-looking boy of about eighteen, but his face was hard, his gaze challenging.

“But he’s just a child,” I protested to Betsy.

“Not any longer.” She slid a second photo from the envelope. “We had our artist age him according to the earlier picture and plus the descriptions from rape victims. This is what he’d look like now.”

I gasped when I saw the artist’s rendition of that boy all grown up now, strikingly handsome, the curves of the younger face now matured into hard, flat planes. The eyes savvy under thick eyebrows. The lips full and sensual. The dark hair, on the long side now and stylishly cut.

My hand flew to my wine glass, grabbed it, lifted it. I took a big gulp. Then another.

I knew that face. I’d seen that face before!

But, where? And when?

21

I did exactly what the Chief asked me to do: I quietly took my colleagues aside, one by one, and showed them the photo. I started with the brokers in Hudson Hills, and then went as far west as White Plains, as far south as Yonkers, as far north as Katonah. Nothing. Nobody recognized the man in the doctored photo. By the time I was done, I’d looked at the damn thing so many times, I was no longer certain I did, either.

One late-October afternoon when the oak leaves had begun to fall, I sat out on the terrace with the picture of the adult Danny Joe Farrell on my lap and stared at it for a long time. Rape is more about anger than it is about sex, that’s what all the books say. And, after all, I should know. I shuddered. Why are you so angry, Danny? I thought. Why are you attacking my colleagues?

Then I stared out over the choppy gray river and thought about the last time I’d seen Amy Honeywell. It had been at a fundraising Gala for a food pantry in Mount Kisco. Oh, yes, even in our affluent county there are people who need help staving off hunger. It’s great P.R. for brokers to show their faces at these benefit events. The economy’s good, and the housing market is booming. Wall Street tycoons, who abound in the river towns, are always ready to trade up in terms of housing. At the Food Pantry Gala, a TV celebrity chef who lived in the county had donated for live auction a dinner for ten to be personally cooked by him in the winner’s own home. The starting bid was ten thousand dollars.

Festively clad Gala attendees whispered to each other at the large round tables. Excitement filled the perfume-scented air. The first bid came in. “Eleven-thousand dollars.” It was followed immediately by “twelve-thousand dollars.” Some bold attendee bid fifteen-thousand. Amy Honeywell raised a languid hand. “Fifty-thousand dollars,” she said. It was over the top --the winning bid.

And now she was dead.

I wondered if she’d enjoyed her celebrity-chef dinner.

Daniel Joseph Farrell, I want to find you, I thought. I will not stop until I am able to help get you out off the streets. You are evil and cruel and you don’t deserve to live among the rest of us. I want to even the score … for what happened to me so long ago, but especially for what happened to Amy and any other woman you have raped or killed.

I felt as if I were making a sacred oath.

22

It was six weeks now since I’d come up with the idea to place an ad in the Personals column of a new print magazine called Looking, that, marketed throughout the Northeast, devoted itself to everything beyond Google’s information highway. I went out to check my mailbox, wrapping the warm cashmere bathrobe close to my body against the winter wind. I’d been watching the mail every day to see if anyone had responded.

The ad read: $500 reward to anyone with information about Daniel Joe Farrell, approximate age 29, please write: MM, Box 261, Hudson Hills, New York, 10016.

Chief Betsy would be livid if she knew what I’d done. Not only had I broken my promise to her, but also, I thought, she might be able to charge me with interference in a police investigation. But I’d felt compelled to place that ad. After having exhausted any possible leads among my professional acquaintances, I still felt that I hadn’t done enough.

Then I got the idea of a Personals ad. I’d talked it over with Claire, who had scoffed and told me that the print media were old fashioned, and that she could get far better results by doing intensive online searches. “Amy Honeywell was my colleague, too,” she told me. “I’ve got a stake in this as well.”

“So, do it, then,” I said, blithely.

My ad had now been running for the entire six weeks, and there had only been one, totally incoherent, response.

My only consolation was that Claire hadn’t done any better in her online search.

This morning, the mailbox was stuffed with the usual depressing bunch of department-store flyers and utility bills. But, sorting through the junk mail, on the way back to the house, I suddenly caught my breath. Almost lost among the pieces of junk mail was a small, pink envelope with scalloped edges on the flap, hand-addressed in purple ink but with no return address. Very deliberate. Very organized. Very feminine.

Could this be a response to the magazine ad?

I carried the mail into my kitchen where a warm cup of cocoa, half empty, awaited me. Tossing out every catalog, I stacked the bill envelopes neatly, all the while staring at the pink envelope.
Was it? Or was it
not?

Hand shaking, I finally reached for it, studied the scalloped flap, fearing disappointment but hopeful, nevertheless. I picked up a butter knife from the table, inserted it under the flap, opened the envelope.

Dear Sir/Madam. Many years ago in Buffalo, New York, I was a close friend of Daniel Joseph Farrell’s mother. In fact we were neighbors. If you will meet with me personally, I have information about Danny Joe that I may share with you if I find that your query is for legitimate purposes. Please call me at the number below. Very truly yours, L. Gol
dman.

Bingo! I was over the moon. I’d found a source! I was dying to reach out to the Chief, to involve her in a meeting with this woman. (The envelope, the handwriting, and the message made me certain it was a woman.) I also wanted to let Andrew know. Then, with my hand already on my cell phone, I thought twice; each of them, for different reasons, would order me to back off, and I wasn’t about to do that. And, after all, how dangerous could it be? It wasn’t as if I was going to meet this unknown woman in the haunted attic of a decaying mansion after midnight. In my nightgown. We’d meet in a public place, in full daylight. With lots of people around.

But then, maybe nothing useful would come of my meeting with Ms. Goldman, anyhow, and I was worrying for nothing. And in that case no need to let anyone know. Ever.

I sat back in my cozy kitchen chair and decided to go it alone. I’d arrange a solo meeting with this woman, and see what I could find out. I picked up my phone, and dialed L. Goldman’s number.

“Hello. This is Leah. Please leave a message and I’ll get back to you.” The recorded voice sounded pleasant, and I left my name, number, and the purpose of my call.

Leah Goldman called right back. She did not want to talk about Daniel Joseph Farrell on the telephone. “I have no idea who you are and what you’re up to. I want to meet you before I tell you anything about that family. Ms. Mitty, just tell me one thing,” Leah asked, “you’re not a detective or anything, are you? Because, if you’re involved in law enforcement, in any way, shape, or form, I will not talk to you.”