Social Death: A Clyde Shaw Mystery (6 page)

Panda was a good twenty pounds overweight, with a goofy grin and balding pate, and although he could probably afford better, he favored off-the-rack suits to the designer ones some of the detectives on the force wore. He also had a soft spot for kitschy ties, like the one featuring cigarette-smoking bass he was wearing that day.

“Smoked fish,” he said.

“Funny,” I acknowledged.

“What’s wrong? I thought I’d at least get a smile.”

“I knew the victim. She was my—” I couldn’t finish.

“I know, kid.” He patted me on the back of the hand. Panda had lost friends on the force, a child to leukemia. I knew he understood what I was going through. “You sure you’re up for this?”

I nodded, shaking off the tears that were threatening to break loose. “They’ve paired me with a new guy.”

“You’re not covering the case for Georgia?”

“Not per se. I’m working with one of our new correspondents. We were both the first ones on the scene.”

He leaned back in his chair as our sandwiches arrived in a pair of parchment-lined red plastic baskets. “This gotta be a tricky one for FirstNews.”

“You can say that again.” I didn’t touch my sandwich. My appetite was still gone and showed no signs of returning.

Panda bit into his pastrami and rye and chewed in silence for a good minute as I nursed my root beer. Wiping the mustard from the side of his mouth, he pushed my basket an inch closer to me. “You not eating?”

“I’m not hungry.”

“That’s a first.”

I shrugged.

“Eat, Shaw. You need your strength.”

Reluctantly, I took a bite, chewed. Took another bite, chewed some more. Auto-eat, I called it.

Panda looked to the back of the restaurant. “Forgot I wanted to wash my hands.” He laid a brown paper evidence bag face down on the table and got out of his seat. “Back in a flash.”

I flipped over the envelope. It was marked KRAVIS with a Sharpie. Was he taking it back to the lab for Ehlers? There was a protocol with how evidence was dealt with—the technicians took everything themselves straight to the lab to be dusted for fingerprints, analyzed, searched for clothing fibers, skin cells, or hairs. Ehlers must have found something after they left and asked Panda to take it in for him. I glanced over by the bathroom door. I had time to peek inside, and if there was ever an assignment worth bending the rules for, this was it. But I couldn’t do that to Panda. He trusted me. If I needed to know what was in there, he would tell me.

I took another bite of my sandwich. Panda returned to the table. Laid the bag back in his lap with a smile. “Your bosses, they worried about what we found on the scene?”

“What
did
you find?” My leg bounced under the table. “I’m told there was no evidence of drugs or sex play?”

He tipped his root beer into his glass. “Toxicology reports won’t be back for weeks. But we didn’t find any drugs on the scene and the victim didn’t have any bruises we’d associate with a sex crime. She wasn’t wearing any underwear, though.”

I gave him an exasperated look. “That’s the fashion. Plenty of girls go commando.”

“I may be an old codger, but you can’t tell me that’s sanitary.”

I laughed despite myself. Then I got serious. “What else did you find?”

“You mean this?” He lifted the bag back out of his lap, opened it up, and picked out a bunch of mustard packets.

“Are you kidding me?” I slumped against the back of the chair, tipped my head back to look at the ceiling.

“I’m sorry, kid. But this case isn’t like the others. Olivia was your friend and she’s the daughter of your network’s founder. If I’m gonna trust you on this one, I gotta know I can.”

I peeled my body off the back of my chair. “She wasn’t just a friend, Neal. She was my
best
friend. And this isn’t about protecting the network or doing my job. This is about figuring out what happened to her.”

“OK,” he said simply. He understood.

“Any sign of a break-in? Burglary? Olivia had a safe, did you find that?”

“No sign of break-in. No sign of burglary. The safe in the master bedroom doesn’t look like it’s been broken into. Forensics will have to check the fingerprints.”

“And she was bludgeoned, correct?”

“She was hit on the head repeatedly with a crystal vase.”

“Did you recover it?”

“Shattered,” he said. “Blows were mostly on the back of the head, but the killer got in some bad ones to the face, too. Looks like cause of death is trauma to the brain, but we’ll see what comes back in the autopsy. There was a lot of blood. She might a’ bled out.”

The little hairs on my neck stood up. A slow death was the worst kind. It gave you time to think about all the mistakes you’d made, all the regrets you had. But Olivia and I were different. Her mistakes were few and far between. Maybe those last minutes had been peaceful for her; maybe—hopefully—she’d died with some knowledge of all the good she’d brought to the world.

“You OK?” Panda asked.

I held my breath, let the moment pass. “Yes.”

He eyed my sandwich again. I took another half-hearted bite, put it down again. “Any sign of struggle?” I asked.

“Bruises around the arms.”

That meant Olivia hadn’t been caught off-guard, at least not completely. She’d tried to defend herself. But given that there were no signs of a break-in, my guess was she knew her attacker. That could have included Rachel. I went over the new facts in my head: Crystal vase murder weapon, signs of struggle, not a home-invasion burglary. “What kind of building security was in place?” I asked.

“The usual. Cameras in the lobby and elevator, service entrance, and service elevator. But everything was shut off.”

“You’re fucking kidding me.”

“The system is located in the super’s office. He says he found it switched off when he checked on it on Saturday morning. He figured there was a malfunction or something. Apparently that happened frequently.”

“You’re telling me you’ve got no video of who came in and out of that building on Friday night? Do you even know the name of Olivia’s visitor on the night of her murder?”

He stopped chewing for a second. I waited as he finished his bite and figured out how he was going to respond. “You know you can’t use any of what I’m about to tell you.”

“Panda, it’s me you’re talking to.”

“I got a soft spot for you Shaw, but I can’t afford to get screwed over on this one. This ain’t slap-on-the-wrist territory.”

“F
or you and me both,” I countered, leaning forward on my elbows. “So tell me. What do the cops know about Olivia’s visitor?”

“You ever try the knishes here?” he asked, attempting to change the subject. “The spinach ones are pretty tasty.”

“Panda, the woman. I take it she’s a person of interest?”

He nodded, wiped some of the grease off his chin with a napkin. “Her name’s Rachel Rockwell. Name ring any bells?” Panda put his sandwich down.

“Should it?” It wasn’t a lie, but the truth was that I knew who Rachel Rockwell was and why she’d been in Olivia’s apartment Friday night. I knew, but I couldn’t tell anyone. I’d made that promise to Olivia, and I wasn’t about to go back on my word. Especially now.

He shrugged. “They’re getting a divorce. He filed. Husband’s a lawyer at one of those swanky firms. They live in Greenwich. Drive nice cars. Kids attend private schools.”

Ten to one, the police were at that very moment trying to ascertain if Olivia and Rachel’s husband were sleeping together. Then Rachel would have a motive for bludgeoning Olivia to death with a crystal vase. Detectives loved nothing more than tying everything together into a nice, neat love triangle. I knew better. This was no triangle.

“How’d you ID Rachel Rockwell?” I asked.

“Her fingerprint was on a wine glass. It matched one in the system.”

I raised an eyebrow.
A criminal past?

“She was arrested for a DUI last spring.”

“Booze or drugs?”

“The first one.”

We’d be able to look that up, get her mug shot. Plus, drunks tend to make spectacles of themselves in public places and Greenwich was an insular community. I’d be willing to lay down another bet that she had a reputation for stirring up trouble. “What other evidence do you have?” I asked. “So far all I’m hearing is circumstantial.”

His face darkened. “There may be more.”

“What is it?”

“The medical examiner found something under Olivia’s fingernails.”

“Tissue matter?”

“You know you can’t report this.”

“You think it’s Rachel’s?”

“We don’t know, and won’t for a while. You know how long these tests take. Her husband’s lawyer is refusing our request for a sample, so getting the judge to grant the subpoena will add on some time.”

“He’s lawyered up already?”

That made me suspicious. Either Rachel’s husband knew enough about how these things worked to stay ahead of the game, or he had something to hide.

“And of course they had to get a big shot,” Panda added, referring to the Rockwells’ lawyer.

“Who?”

“Uffizo.”

Oh crap
. Frank Uffizo was a big-dog defense attorney who couldn’t resist the spotlight. He’d been on our show more times than any of us could remember and had a decent relationship with Georgia. But the guy was slick. If I called him directly, he’d go behind my back and create a bidding war between us and every other network in the business. He didn’t want money—he had plenty of that, and besides, we’d never pay for an interview like this. What he wanted was control. Uffizo liked to hash out the questions beforehand. It wasn’t fair, or ethical, but sometimes we had no choice but to play by his rules—and follow his script. You can imagine how Georgia felt about that.

“What does the PD know about Rachel Rockwell so far, besides how much her husband had in the bank?” I asked.

Panda bit into his half-sour. “She’s a mother of two. Good looking. Long, dark hair and big eyes. Part Native American.”

“Where’s she from originally?”

“Birth certificate says South Dakota. Pine Ridge Reservation.”

“That’s a long way from Greenwich,” I commented. All of this was new information to me. I’d be able to use it to work around what I knew and report this instead. I went into producer mode again, thinking about how we could most efficiently locate a gaggle of Rachel’s neighbors and friends to talk about her on air. She had to be well-known in her community. She wore purple fur and stilettos, drank too much, and came from the wrong side of the tracks by about 3,000 miles. I made a mental note to get someone out to Connecticut to start canvassing her neighborhood for sources ASAP.

“She won scholarships doing beauty pageants. Almost made it all the way to the Miss America pageant. From there, law school,” Panda summarized.

“So she’s smart.” For some reason, that worried me.

“Except after she graduated, she opted out, as you ladies like to call it these days. Married Rockwell right out of law school. Spent the rest of her days running the carpool and playing tennis at the country club. Model citizen except for the DUI.”

“Think she’ll turn herself in?”

“She better.”

“You know I’m going to have to put her picture on air.”

This stuff had a formula. First piece is the photo. Maybe her mug shot or a shot of her competing in a beauty contest. Best case I find a shot of her in a bathing suit for our male viewership. Then, for the women, we put a neighbor on air talking about what a great mom she was, how pretty and energetic and what a great baker/tennis player/homemaker she was. Then we get her parents,
Ma and Pa
straight from South Dakota. And then, if we have luck on our side and can get around Uffizo, we get the husband. It wasn’t rocket science. That’s why everything came down to finding an inside track. Time is what it’s all about. Getting ahead. Booking the guest before anyone else knows to even call them. Because if you get the guest, you get the ratings. I didn’t care about any of that, but I did want to find Rachel. She was either responsible for my friend’s death or she knew who was.

Panda hunched his shoulders. “Give us another few hours. Let us bring her in first.”

I didn’t like it. I leaned forward across the table. “And if she disappears? What then?”

“Four hours, Shaw. She’s got kids. She’s not a flight risk.”

I begrudgingly agreed. The truth was it would be tough to get all this new info worked into the package we already had in the works for the three o’clock broadcast. Time was tight enough as it was. I looked at my watch. “It’s one now. That means we go live at five.”

He balled up his napkin. “Better you than someone else.”

“Any other evidence?” I asked. If the cops weren’t sure that the tissue under Olivia’s nails was Rachel’s they wouldn’t be able to rule out other suspects—unless they had additional reasons to think she’d done it.

“Neighbors heard yelling after the women returned home.”

I digested what he said for a moment. “They heard yelling? Fighting or calls for help?”

“An argument, between two women, they said. Very loud, very serious.” Panda drained the last of his soda.

Witnesses played an important role in a criminal prosecution. If the detectives could nail Rachel with DNA evidence
and
witness testimony, she was toast. Case closed, media circus averted. But I knew something the police didn’t, and I wasn’t so sure things were going to turn out that way.