Simple (40 page)

“Boss. It doesn't sound like you slept today.”

“I did some, yes, a little. Just be totally thorough. You've pretty much got the whole evening ahead of you on this job. I'm sending the lab car—two techs—with you. Use them. It's going to be painstaking. To that end, I ordered a couple of pizzas up. I think they might be here.”

“Yay, Boss,” Dolan chanted. “I could have sworn I smelled pizza.” So they went out to the hallway and there it was, yeasty dough and cheese to lift their spirits.

*   *   *

“I'LL GET YOU OUT,”
Morty
said. “That's a promise. But here's the deal. You have to tell me everything. From before A to after Z. Everything. I'm good, but if I'm going to work with the facts, I need the facts. Leave out nothing. You understand. I need to know where and how you stood, everything you touched, everything.”

“How do I know to trust you?”

“You have to. No choice.”

“But what do they have? You haven't told me what they found out.”

“Look. I've worked my sources. All they're coughing up at this point is the use of vehicles, the alibi, some tape that shows you leaving the parking garage behind the girl. It doesn't sound like much. They're biting down hard, determined. Tell me everything. Every breath you took.”

Simon does this. As he talks, he is more and more amazed by his own planning, more and more interested in telling it.

It takes a long time. “I'm missing dinner,” he tells Silber at one point.

Silber snorts, goes to the hall, summons an escort officer, and makes a request. He comes back saying, “They'll hold a tray for you.”

And so Todd keeps talking. Then after what seems like hours, he finally goes to his lousy jailhouse dinner of sausages. The TV is on as usual, tuned to the local news.

At a quarter to seven, he hears about himself on the tube. They don't have a picture of him to show except a shot of him in the background when Connolly was making a speech. “… Connolly's campaign manager has been arrested in connection with the August 13 murder of Cassandra Price of Oakland. Police are not commenting on the connection between Simon and Hathaway, who is also in police custody for the killing. Michael Connolly was supposed to announce his candidacy for the gubernatorial race by the end of this week. He had no comment for media personnel today.” Then there is a shot of the golden boy going into his office. That's all the hungry hounds were able to get today.

The money. The waste.

*   *   *

CHRISTIE DROVE UP
to the
mansion again and felt almost used to it—the beauty, the set-apartness. Connolly met him in the formal parlor this time. “I heard you arrested Todd Simon. I want you to know I'm planning—had been planning—to get out of the race before Todd made the news.”

“Now is the time to tell me anything that will help prosecute him.”

“Are you still looking at me?”

“Did you tell him to do it?”

“No.”

“Did you order it?”

“No.”

“You'd be willing to take a lie detector test?”

“Yes. Absolutely.”

“Talk to me.”

“I thought I was in love with her … Cassie. It wasn't real. She made me feel good. I haven't felt … good. I needed her for a way to keep going.”

“Many a middle-aged man wishes for the adoration of a gorgeous young woman; some act on it.”

“Some resist,” Connolly said.

Christie said, “You are clearly feeling guilt.”

“Cassie was not the first. I've messed up my marriage, that's for sure.”

“But you're telling me you did not order a murder. And yet I can tell you're not surprised. Why did you not come to me about Todd?”

“At first I didn't believe it—wouldn't let myself believe it. It took a long time to come to terms with the idea. To tell you…? Accusing another person, without proof, someone who has been loyal to you, is a serious business.”

“Loyal?”

“Politically. He worked very hard for me.” Connolly's face tightened.

“What did you just think of?”

“The day … the day it happened, and just before, Todd was at me, asking about women in my life, asking about what might come out in the campaign. I answered him truthfully that yes, Cassie was getting emotional, wanting more from me than I could give her. He, afterward, he said it was totally strange the way things happen, but that Cal Hathaway had killed her. For a while that made sense. She was so attractive. Many men wanted her. She knew it. I knew it.”

“But she wanted to marry you.”

“Yes. She did.”

“And Simon wanted to protect you.”

“Yes. My candidacy anyway.”

“He had motive. Was anyone else involved?”

“I can't think it. These are not bad men.”

“Maybe they are.”

“When this is over—when you don't need me anymore—I'm going to go out of the country for a while. I'll be available. I'm not running. I need to be someplace where this is not the only thing people know about me.”

“We'll do a polygraph before you go. I'll need all your contact information constantly updated. We'd have to keep in touch.”

“My family is here. I'm not going to be so far that I can't get back in twelve hours total from your phone call to my arrival. I'll stay in contact. I may be flawed in many ways, but I love my family.”

Christie left him, making arrangements for the polygraph the next morning at 7:00
A.M.
when few people would be at the office.

*   *   *

THE DETECTIVES
worked in Todd Simon's house well into the evening. Colleen, Denman, and Hurwitz used powerful flashlights, slanting them this way and that. Potocki sat working Simon's computer while Dolan went through his desk.

“I'm not seeing anything,” Dolan said when Colleen poked her head in to check.

“I got one goodie,” Potocki said. “Yesterday. He looked up the refuse schedule for the city. We can't convict him on that alone, but it helps.”

Hurwitz and Denman studied the rugs and sofa in the living room, looking for anything obvious in the way of hairs, fibers. They had the lab guys take samples even when they couldn't see anything, and then they opened the sofa cushions and searched inside. Colleen heard them say, “This place looks awfully clean.”

At the time, she was in the kitchen pulling up cellophane from the cereal boxes and crackers. It was exhausting looking underneath and inside everything, but Christie thought the guy might have hidden some of the stuff he took from the wallet. It was a good thing Simon wasn't much of an eater—he didn't have a lot of boxes and containers around. She studied the floor for bits of the earth that might match what they saw in the bag with the phone and the wallet. She sat at Todd's kitchen table, thinking. Why would he plant the wallet with only some things out of it? And the supposed photographs? Either they were no longer in there when he took the wallet or he kept them out for a purpose—to look at them himself or to plant them at a future time. That meant they were still somewhere.

She went back to his home office. Dolan was gathering paper from the shredder for the labs to study. She asked him if she could have a look. With a magnifying glass, she did a first examination of the bits of paper. It was lucky for them that his shredder didn't work very well and thus they could see pretty much what kind of thing was in there. She did not see any photographic paper.

The others checked the garbage disposal as well and the kitchen traps and the garbage cans and the earth of the yard, looking for anything that signaled disruption.

Finally she and most of the others worked in the bedroom—only minus Potocki, who was still at the desk, hacking into Simon's files and reporting that there were tons of e-mails and letters, but nothing that mentioned Cassie Price.

The men from the mobile crime unit stood on the back porch at the moment, joking, until they were needed to take a delicate sample of anything. It all seemed hopeless.

Christie got there at ten o'clock. They all kept at what they were doing, and he, being a stickler, repeated much of what they had done once. He looked with favor on the garbage they had collected. There was one Ziploc bag he thought might be interesting because of the traces of dirt in it.

Colleen was going through clothing. It was amazing how many pockets there were in men's clothing. Simon was not even a clotheshorse, but still, he had a lot. The rest of the team was in the basement going over out-of-season clothes as well as every other inch of the place. She stooped down and felt along the wall of the closet but did not find anything. After that, she opened the shoe boxes, one after another.

Potocki came into the bedroom. “You look tired.”

“I am still tired.”

“Did he make his bed and we messed it?”

“No, it was like this, unmade.”

“His life seems fairly ordinary on the surface. He did check the refuse schedule. We have that.”

“I think this is soil in this shoe.”

“I'll call the techs. I wonder when Boss is going to knock off. You know he didn't sleep today. He can't fool me.”

Just then Christie came in and said, “Enough. We can do more tomorrow. We have to let some sanity prevail in our lives.”

“Thanks, Boss.”

“Squad meeting tomorrow morning. At eight.”

*   *   *

MONICA TRIED TO
explain herself to herself and couldn't. She was up late, at her computer. She was looking up flights to Ireland. Then she was looking up ways to ship large containers of things to Europe. And then she was making a list of possible lecturers who could teach her classes. I'm a fool, she told herself. But insistently, she remembered the early days, the way Mike had worked at construction one summer because he wanted to understand the workers and what their day-to-day stresses were. He had seemed so ready for a simple life. What happens to people? Is there a way to get back to basics? Ireland, like every other place, has a class system, and so there will be struggles to forget money and what it can accomplish. A song keeps running through her head—she can't think of what it is.

THIRTEEN

THURSDAY, AUGUST 27

THE DETECTIVES
were gathered for the squad meeting and Christie was explaining the arrest of Todd Simon when Janet Littlefield came to the door to interrupt—she was holding the fort just outside the squad room and had taken a call from the desk.

“I'm sorry, Commander. It's important.”

“Dolan. Take it over.”

Artie hopped to the front of the room.

Christie got to the hallway. Littlefield came close to him, saying, “Man came to us. Wants to confess to the killing of Cassie Price.”

“Huh?”

“That's what he said.”

Christie eyed a small, very thin man seated near Littlefield's desk. The man immediately stood when Christie approached. It was impossible to gauge his age—anywhere from fifty-five to eighty years old. He was bald and bony. The cap he took off was an ordinary baseball stadium cap, which he traced around the rim as if he held a fedora.

“I'm Commander Christie. Your name?”

“Frank … Francis Santini.”

“And you'd like to talk?”

“I want … I came to confess.”

“You knew Cassie Price?”

“No. I was robbing her, then she found me.”

“You didn't know her before that?”

“No.”

“We should talk. Let's go find a room.” He met Littlefield's eyes. “Tell Detective Dolan to cut it short and meet me in Room A.” She turned to the squad room, where, Christie had not one doubt, she would handle it well.

“Can we get you something to drink, Mr. Santini?”

“Like what?”

“Coffee, water, a soda. That's what we have to offer.”

“Coffee.”

“Right.” Christie guided him to Room A. “Have a seat.”

He poured a cup of coffee, too curious to wait for Dolan, grabbed a legal pad, clicked on the camera from the panel in the hall, and entered Room A.

“Let's get some basics down first. Name. Address. Employment. Bank.”

“All right,” the man said. “Should I write down that I killed Cassie Price?”

“Not yet. Just jot down what I need. Employment, bank, doctor, all that.”

The man wrote slowly. Christie studied him—bad skin color. He was ill. Liver problem kicking in. Drink?

Francis Santini. The legal pad held his address—he lived in Friendship. For doctor, he'd written a name Christie didn't recognize. Unemployed. His bank was PNC.

“Tell me about it.”

“I was out of money. I was only planning to rob her. But she found me in her house and she was starting to scream. I ended up hurting her.”

“You didn't know her?”

“No.”

“Let's see. You live in Friendship. What made you decide to rob somebody in lower Oakland?”

Dolan entered the room at that moment. His eyes lifted slightly toward the camera. Christie took that to mean that the inner circle on the case was watching. “This is Detective Dolan. Just speak freely. Why did you go to lower Oakland to rob somebody?”

“I go down to Sestili's Nursery a lot. I always walk back and forth in that alley next to the nursery, just thinking, mostly about what I can't afford to buy. I saw the girl once, getting in her car. She looked rich, the way she was dressed. Her car was nice, too, all spiffed up. I figured she had something to steal.”

“Why didn't you go in the daytime when she wasn't home?”

He appeared to think about this. “I thought someone would see me in the day. And I had a few drinks for courage that night and it seemed more possible to pull it off.”

“Okay. Good. Very good. How did you get in?”

“I jimmied the lock to the back door. But she heard me and she came to the door. The door was open by then. I just kept working at it to show her her lock was bad and saying that somebody was worried about her and this somebody sent me to replace her lock with a better one. It was insane, but I just kept talking, trying to talk my way out of trouble.”