Most Wanted (19 page)

“What do you want?” Sarah asked irritably, not moving from her spot near the door.

“You spoke to me on the elevator yesterday. I know you know something about Jed Benson’s murder.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Sarah’s face was bright red, her breathing fast. Was she angry or scared?

“Are you afraid to talk to me, Sarah?” Melanie asked, searching her face.

“Afraid? No! I just don’t know why you’re here accusing me, that’s all. Jed was my supervisor. I don’t know anything about his death. Why should I?”

She was clearly lying. And the way she said Jed Benson’s name had an interesting ring to it. An intimate ring. Melanie took a shot in the dark.

“Sarah, somebody wanted Jed Benson dead. Given your close personal relationship with him, you could be next. You need to talk to me.”

“What do
you
know about me and Jed?” Sarah scoffed.

“We know a lot,” Melanie bluffed.

Sarah stood there for a second in silence. Then, slowly, her chin began to quiver, her face crumpled, and she started to sob. There was a stagy, overdone quality to the display, and Melanie made no move to comfort her. Besides, it was too galling, given Melanie’s own current circumstances. Sarah might be young, but she was old enough to know it was wrong to sleep with your married boss. And if the big secret was an affair with Jed Benson, it wasn’t much of a lead. No reason to think such an affair would have caused Benson’s murder.

Sarah got up and bolted for a door off the kitchen, leaving it ajar. Melanie heard the sounds of water being turned on and Sarah sobbing melodramatically.

“Go away! Just go away!” Sarah cried, and slammed the bathroom door.

Melanie sighed and checked her watch. She was due downtown in half an hour to meet Dan and Randall for the trip to Otisville. She needed to wrap this up and get on her way, and she hadn’t gotten a single useful piece of information yet. But something told her not to quit. The karma here was weird.

She moved farther into the room, looking around. A side table next to the bed held a telephone-and-answering-machine combo with a caller ID display. Glancing at the bathroom door first, Melanie leaned over and began scrolling back through the caller ID, reviewing Sarah’s telephone calls. All the calls in the past day or so had come from the same cell-phone number. It had called her twelve times last night alone between 9:58 P.M. and 1:40 A.M. Someone had something pretty urgent to discuss with Sarah van der Vere. Melanie snatched her notebook from her briefcase and copied down the number.

“You okay in there, Sarah?” she called through the closed door.

“I
said
go away!” Sarah yelled between sobbing breaths.

Melanie crossed to a tall dresser standing against the wall opposite the bed and examined the things strewn across its top. A wallet, some jewelry, and a large, old-fashioned clock radio. She quickly went through the wallet. Nothing interesting, just cash and credit cards. The clock radio was odd. Clunky, cumbersome. She looked closer. The knobs were phony. She lifted it up and studied it. Huh.

“Sarah,” she called, trying to keep the excitement out of her voice, “when are you planning to come out of there?”

“I’m not coming out until you leave!”

Melanie knew a thing or two about hidden cameras. Generally they broadcast to receivers equipped with video recorders. Judging from the vintage of this one, it probably had limited range, meaning that the receiver must be hidden in this room somewhere. The closet next to the dresser, perhaps? Caught up in the rush of discovery, anxious about getting caught snooping, Melanie didn’t have a moment to waste. She hurried to the closet, turned the knob slowly to avoid telltale creaking, and eased the door open. Unbelievable, there it was. A video recorder, in plain view on the floor of Sarah’s closet. Melanie knelt down and pushed “eject.” A videocassette popped out. She held it in her hand, staring at it, heart pounding. You never could tell about people. The camera in the clock radio pointed directly at Sarah’s bed. Maybe it was just her own private porno, but maybe she was blackmailing Jed Benson with tapes of their trysts. Difficult to imagine how that would result in
him
winding up dead as opposed to her, but still, this had to be important.

Sarah turned off the water in the bathroom. Swiftly, Melanie closed the closet and shoved the videotape into her briefcase. She headed for the front door.

“Look, Sarah,” she called loudly, “I’ll leave now. But I’m warning you, this isn’t over.” No response.

“Once you know you’re needed for questioning, you can be charged with contempt if you leave town.”

Nothing. This girl was beginning to annoy her.

“I’ll pull the door closed behind me, Sarah. You’ll be hearing from me.”

BY THE TIME SHE GOT TO HER OFFICE, DAN AND Randall were parked out front waiting for her. Randall unfolded himself from the front passenger seat and flipped it forward.

“Not only can’t I fit back there, but it scares me,” he said with a wry smile. “And that’s after nearly twenty years on the job.”

Melanie contemplated the cramped, cluttered backseat, littered with clothing, newspapers, and empty coffee cups. “Wow.”

“Yeah. We’ve had reports of animal sightings,” Randall said.

“You’re killing me, botha youse,” Dan groaned from the driver’s seat. He came around to where they stood and gathered up an armload of clothing and garbage, dumping it wholesale into the trunk. He was freshly shaved, wearing neatly pressed khakis and a clean polo shirt. She wondered if he’d ironed the pants himself this morning to please her. He came back around, smiling.

“Okay now? Him I’m not surprised, he’s a pussy-ass wimp. But you,” Dan said to Melanie, looking right into her eyes, sending a jolt through her body, “I thought you had nerves of steel. Chased by a stone-cold killer in the file room last night, and you performed better than this.”

“I’m very squeamish about dirt.”

“Why doesn’t that surprise me? Didn’t I say you were high maintenance?”

Randall looked back and forth between the two of them. “Something going on here I should know about?”

Melanie climbed into the backseat, thinking she’d better put a stop to this thing. People were beginning to notice. It wasn’t good for either of them.

“Hey, Randall, you weren’t kidding. There’s definitely animal hair back here.” She brushed yellowish hairs off her black pants.

“My dog, Guinness,” Dan said as he got back into the car.

“Sometimes I think O’Reilly likes that mutt better’n he likes people,” Randall said. “The Irish are strange that way. Us black folks don’t go in for consorting with no animals.”

“Randall, you perv, you better not be implying anything about my dog.”

“Not your dog, son, it’s you I wonder about.”

“I know character when I see it. Guinness is a purebred golden retriever. They may not be the smartest dogs, but they’re honorable and true. Which is more than you can say for most people. You like dogs?” he asked, catching Melanie’s eyes in the rearview mirror.

“Yeah, sure.”

“Maybe you’ll meet him sometime.”

“Maybe.” Her tone was unfriendly. He looked away sharply. It killed her to hurt him, but it was for his own good. Ring or no ring, she was still married, hardly a candidate for a new relationship. She wondered how this could have gone so far in one day.

“Uh, can you watch the road, please?” Randall said as Dan pulled out, nearly sideswiping another car. An awkward silence settled over them, lengthening as they headed for the West Side Highway.

“So,” Melanie said, intent upon breaking it, “Dan, did you tell Randall what I found last night when I went through your old files? The phone call between Jasmine Cruz and the UM?”

Dan was silent, as if the road required his full attention.

“Yeah, O’Reilly here told me about the whole incident. We were talking about it just now on the way to pick you up, back when he knew how to speak.” Randall’s glance was half concerned, half teasing.

“Make up your mind. A minute ago I was talking too much and not driving right,” Dan said.

“Okay, there he goes. Glad to have you back, son. My personal view, Melanie: I can’t believe that was Slice who took the stuff out of your bag. I’m familiar with the security in your building, and I don’t think it would’ve been possible for him to get in. At least not without some inside connection.”

“That’s what I said. He must’ve had an inside connection! We should follow up on that, maybe get the sign-in sheet from the security desk.”

“No, no. I’m not saying Slice had an inside connection, but that it wasn’t Slice in the basement last night. I don’t go in for conspiracy theories. Usually the commonsense explanation is the right one.”

“Who put the tape on the security camera, then?” she demanded. “Who stole the evidence from my bag?”

“Some low-life building employee doing a bit of thieving on the side.”

“He takes a cassette tape, a transcript, animal-torture Polaroids, and thirty bucks? But leaves credit cards and checks? To me the money is a cover. It’s the evidence he was after,” she said.

“Why would a building employee want your evidence?” Randall asked.

“He wouldn’t. That’s why I’m saying it was Slice, or somebody close to him.”

“Nah, I don’t see it. I’m sticking with Ramirez’s theory that this was a retaliatory hit, plain and simple. If we want answers, we should do exactly what we’re doing right now—go interview Delvis Diaz. Diaz is the only known link between Jed Benson and the Blades, so that’s the most promising angle, far as I’m concerned.”

Melanie looked at Dan in the rearview mirror. “Is that your position, too?” she demanded, eyes flashing.

“I agree with you the tape is worth following up on. I’m trying to get a lead on Jasmine Cruz’s whereabouts. If nothing else, she might know where Slice is. And Benson’s phone records should be in today. If there was some kind of relationship between Benson and Jasmine Cruz, it should show up on his phone.”

“I guess that’s fair,” she said grudgingly.

“Okay, so that’s that. Anything else?” Dan asked.

“Yes, actually. I took an interesting detour on the way to work this morning.”

She told them about the videocassette she’d taken from Sarah van der Vere’s apartment.

“Gotta love a prosecutor who doesn’t trouble herself about a search warrant,” Dan said to Randall.

“Oh, Jesus, you’re right!” Melanie exclaimed. “What was I thinking? I was so involved in playing cops and robbers I got completely carried away.”

“Been there, done that,” Dan said, laughing.

“Never did care for the Fourth Amendment much myself,” Randall said.

“What should I do? Should I take it back?” she asked, truly upset at herself. To do something so careless—it wasn’t like her.

“And what?” Dan asked. “Knock on her door and say, ‘Here’s the tape I pinched from your house—we’re all done with it’? You’d burn our entire investigation.”

“But it won’t be admissible in court without a warrant!” she protested. “And any leads we derive from it are fruit of the poisonous tree, inadmissible also. Although only against Sarah van der Vere. And only if she ends up being a defendant.”

“There, you see?” Dan said. “Not a problem. Sarah might be a porn star, but I’d bet good money she’s not Benson’s killer. So I vote we watch the tape.”

“Sign me up for that duty!” Randall joked. “My wife don’t let me watch blue movies at home.”

RANDALL HAD CALLED AHEAD, SO THE STAFF at Otisville was expecting them. A heavyset young woman from the Liaison Office, with a bleached blond buzz cut, met them at the X-ray machine. Her name tag read LEONA BURKETT, but she didn’t bother to introduce herself.

“Check your cell phones and your weapons,” Leona ordered, snapping her chewing gum. She gave them receipts for what they checked and peel-off name tags to stick on their clothes, then led them through a bewildering series of grimy corridors and elevators, metal doors clanging shut behind them. The ill-fitting polyester pants of her uniform emphasized her wide rear end as she sashayed ahead, the keys on her belt jangling.

“Wait here,” she barked, unlocking a gray metal door and motioning them into a small interview room. “Prisoner’ll be up soon.” She turned the key from the outside when she left, locking them in.

Claustrophobic and windowless except for a tiny pane of bulletproof glass set face high in the door, the room contained little beyond a battered steel desk holding a red telephone and three dilapidated swivel chairs. It was air-conditioned to an arctic chill and lit by a flickering fluorescent light.

“Not enough chairs,” Melanie noted.

“That’s okay, you sit.” With elaborate courtesy, Randall pulled over a chair. “I owe you one for taking the backseat on the ride up.”

“Don’t count on me being so cooperative going back,” she joked.

Randall’s snappy rejoinder was cut short by the sound of another key in the lock.

The door opened, and two burly, pasty-faced guards entered, with Delvis Diaz between them. Diaz was shackled hand and foot, but he walked with attitude. Everything from the set of his square jaw to his narrowed eyes to his erect posture said
Fuck you
to anyone who cared to listen. Short, stocky, and powerfully built, he still wore his lank black hair in the style of gangbangers of a decade earlier, long and gathered into a ponytail on top, shaved underneath. Clad in a standard-issue bright orange prison jumpsuit, he sported around his thick neck the milky green plastic rosary beads allowed inmates, designed to snap apart if you tried to garrote your bunkmate.

One of the guards unlocked Diaz’s cuffs, placed a hand on his shoulder, and pushed him down into a chair, fastening his right handcuff to the chair’s metal arm.

“Looks like it’s your lucky day, Delvis,” the other guard said wolfishly, looking Melanie up and down.

“Watch your tone, pal,” Dan warned.

The guard shrugged, as if to say
What’s your problem
? but said nothing.

“Pick up that phone when you’re done. It rings through to us,” the other guard said. They left, locking the door behind them.