She put her warm, soft lips to my ear. "Just stay ten more minutes," she said. "I promise they"ll be the best ten minutes of your day."
"You"re killing me," I said, trying to pull away.
"I know," she purred. "But you"ll die happy."
Her hand found a new resting place, and I stopped pulling away and leaned into it.
"I have a problem, Doctor," I moaned in her ear. "Something big just went down on the O"Keefe kidnapping, and Cates wants me at the mayor"s house in twenty minutes. But then something big came up in my personal life, and I don"t know what to do."
She pulled her hand away and sat up straight. "Are you serious? Why didn"t you say something? Go."
"Thanks for understanding." I planted one more kiss on her lips. "I"ll definitely be back to pick up where we left off."
Showing up for work wearing yesterday"s clothes is a red flag for the gossipmongers, so I had one drawer at Cheryl"s place just for times like this. I grabbed a clean shirt and called Kylie.
I told her what, when, and where, and I was about to hang up when I heard a man"s voice in the background.
"Who is it? What"s going on?"
It was Spence.
"Go back to sleep," I heard Kylie say just before she hung up.
I had to laugh. I"m sure she didn"t want to get out of bed any more than I did.
At least the universe wasn"t playing favorites. It was d.i.c.king around with both of us.
Chapter 72.
I got to Gracie Mansion at 3:26, three minutes past my ETA. Kylie was already waiting outside the guardhouse.
"How the h.e.l.l did you get here so fast?" I said.
"I pride myself on punctuality. It"s the hallmark of great police work."
"I deserved that," I said as we headed up the mansion"s steps to the sprawling front porch.
"Also, did you forget I"m staying in Sh.e.l.ley"s apartment? It"s five blocks away. I strolled over."
I hadn"t forgotten. But when I"d heard Spence"s voice, I"d jumped to the conclusion that she had spent the night downtown in her own bed. But Spence must have made his way uptown.
Or maybe it wasn"t Spence"s voice.
Or maybe it was none of my d.a.m.n business.
The four of them were in the mayor"s office at a conference table-Mayor Spellman, Irwin Diamond, Captain Cates, and PC Richard Harries. Kylie and I sat down, and the PC started talking.
"Last night, a couple on East Seventy-First Street, Larry and Clare Bertoli, left their apartment at seven fifteen and went to the theater. Mrs. Bertoli got sick during the first act, so they left, went home, and walked in on a burglary in progress. They knew the perp. It was their doorman. He didn"t try to run-just sat down on the couch and started bawling. Mrs. Bertoli called 911. The uniforms made the collar, took him in to the One Nine, and turned him over to the detectives to be debriefed."
I knew he hadn"t gotten us up at this hour to talk about a routine burglary. Cates had already told me that the Rachael O"Keefe case had blown through the roof, and I was waiting for the bombsh.e.l.l. But I know Richard Harries, and he"s painstakingly methodical. He needs time to land the plane.
"The lead investigator is Detective Sal Catapano," he said. "He"s got twenty-one years, and as soon as he walked into the interrogation room, he knew he had a page-one case on his hands. The doorman"s name is Vidmar, Calvin Vidmar."
Bombsh.e.l.l. I looked at Kylie. She knew it, too.
"You recognize the name," Harries said as soon as he saw our reaction.
"Yes, sir," Kylie said. "Vidmar was the doorman on duty the night Rachael O"Keefe"s daughter was murdered. He testified against her in court."
He nodded. "It seems he"s not the solid citizen the prosecution made him out to be. He"s a thief. The tenants all leave house keys with the super in case of emergency. Vidmar would take one out of the storage box, enter an apartment, and help himself to something small-usually one or two pieces of jewelry, or if he found cash, he"d take some, but never enough to be noticed. And if it was, the victims didn"t report it. They either thought it went lost, or in one case, a tenant fired her cleaning lady, thinking it was an inside job."
"Is there any evidence he was in O"Keefe"s apartment the night Kimi was murdered?" I asked.
"Catapano got a search warrant for Vidmar"s apartment in the Bronx and found several pieces of jewelry that he hadn"t had time to unload. And this."
He put an eight-by-ten photo on the table. It was Mookie-the stuffed pink monkey, identical to the one taken from Kimi O"Keefe"s bedroom.
"How long before we can get DNA to see if it"s hers?" Kylie said.
"We don"t have to wait. Catapano told Vidmar he"d be smarter to confess now rather than let the evidence hang him. He started crying again and then spilled his guts. It was a botched robbery. The girl woke up and started screaming. He panicked, put a pillow over her face, and you know the rest-he didn"t mean to kill her; it just happened. He put the body in a trash bag, left her out for the morning pickup, and let the mom take the fall."
I felt as if I"d just been hit by the Hiroshima of bombsh.e.l.ls. The jury had gotten it right. Rachael had told the truth.
"So maybe now I won"t have to take the rap for turning a child killer loose," the mayor said.
"Mr. Mayor, if we release the news that O"Keefe is innocent, she"s a dead woman," the PC said. "The men who took her plan to torture a confession out of her, but the minute they find out that Vidmar did it, they"ll kill her on the spot."
"And if you think people hated you when O"Keefe beat the rap," Irwin said, "they"ll hate you even more when it turns out that she"s innocent, didn"t get the police protection she asked for, and was murdered on your watch."
"Then where the h.e.l.l are we on the Hazmat case?" the mayor said, looking right at me.
I couldn"t let Cates know that we"d gone over her head and put an unauthorized tail on two cops. And I certainly couldn"t tell the mayor that Muriel Sykes had spent an hour behind closed doors with our two prime suspects. I was groping for an answer when Diamond interrupted.
"The last time we spoke, you were getting a list of everyone who knew where O"Keefe was going when she was released. Did you question them all?"
"All but two from the DA"s office," I said. "We plan to connect with them in the morning."
"The G.o.dd.a.m.n election is in four days," Spellman said. "I don"t have time for you to connect with them in the morning. Talk to them now. Find out where they live and drag them out of bed." He turned to the commissioner. "Richard, we can"t c.r.a.p around anymore. Find her."
The PC is appointed by the mayor. If Spellman got voted out, Harries would get swept out along with him. He turned to Kylie and me. "Who from the DA"s office haven"t you talked to yet?"
"ADA Wilson and one of his a.s.sistants," I said.
"d.a.m.n," Harries said. "Mick Wilson is a pain in the a.s.s, and the last person I want to wake up in the middle of the night."
"So then, don"t wake him?" I said.
"h.e.l.l, no. Just make sure he"s last. Wake the a.s.sistant first."
Chapter 73.
I"d been sucker punched more than a few times in my career, but this one hit me the hardest. I never saw it coming. I was right there with the rest of the world, branding Rachael O"Keefe as the Worst Mother in America, and I wondered if my prejudice had any bearing on how hard I had been working to find her.
East End Avenue was dark, deserted, and eerily calming, and we drove without saying a word, both of us trying to process the news in our own way.
Kylie finally broke the silence. "That poor, poor woman. Her daughter was murdered. She had to be overwhelmed with guilt, and then when they accused her, n.o.body believed in her. n.o.body. Including me."
She turned slowly in her seat and rested a hand on my knee. She had my undivided attention. "Zach...," she said.
That was all. Just my name. A single syllable that she let hang in the air, wrapped up in a tangle of emotions-compa.s.sion, anger, and, above all, the trademark raw grit that makes Kylie MacDonald a woman you want at your side and a partner you want at your back.
I slowed down, caught a red light, and turned to face her. She lifted her hand from my knee. I couldn"t tell for sure in the dark, but it looked as if my partner"s eyes were a little on the watery side. My tough-as-nails, take-no-prisoners partner.
"I know what you"re going to say, Kylie, and I"m there. Number one priority-we have to find her. Alive."
"Whatever it takes," she said. "I don"t care how many stupid-a.s.s rules we have to break."
But then I already knew that.
Mick Wilson"s a.s.sistant lived at 47th Street and Ninth Avenue. There was a Starbucks directly across the street, but at 4:15 a.m., it was as dark as the rest of the city. Maybe if I"d had a cup of coffee or a few more hours" sleep, it might have dawned on me that the young lawyer we were going to interview had a familiar last name. But it"s a common enough name-especially in the New York City Police and Fire Departments.
We identified ourselves over the intercom, took the stairs to the third floor, and knocked on the door. She didn"t open it.
"I"m sorry, but I don"t just let total strangers in," she said. "If you"re real cops, you"ll understand. I need an ID. Hold it up to the peephole."
Kylie went first, then I held up my badge and ID. But that wasn"t enough.
"They look real," she said from the other side of the door, "but just tell me why you"re here."
I recognized the syndrome. Somewhere in her life she"d been a crime victim, and she"d never gotten past the trauma. I mouthed three words to Kylie. She"s been mugged.
Or worse, Kylie said silently. She waved me away from the door and centered herself in clear view of the peephole. "Meredith, we"re sorry to barge in on you in the middle of the night, but we can"t wait till the morning. You were part of the DA"s team in the Rachael O"Keefe case. She was kidnapped, and we need your help."
A lock clicked. Then another. The door opened.
"Come in," she said. "Sorry if I got all paranoid on you. Mick told me what you"d been asking about. I told him to tell you that when Rachael got released, I knew where she was going, but I wouldn"t tell anyone."
"Mick neglected to pa.s.s on the message," I said, "so as long as we"re here, we"d like to get it straight from you."
"Sure," she said, conjuring up a smile that did nothing to hide her frazzled nerves.
I was frazzled, too, but I knew I couldn"t come on like a storm trooper. "Meredith," I said in the calmest voice I could muster, "you just said you knew where Rachael was going, and you wouldn"t tell anyone. We know your reputation, and we"re sure you wouldn"t."
"I"m an officer of the court," she said.
"And I"m sure if you"re working with Mick Wilson, you"re a d.a.m.n good one. He"s a pretty demanding guy."
She laughed. "That"s a very generous way to characterize an unrelenting, perfectionist taskmaster, but yes, I"m thrilled to have the opportunity to work with someone of Mick"s caliber."
"So let"s get back to that night," I said. "What did you do after the verdict came down?"
"What do you think?" she said, forming her right hand into the letter C and tipping it toward her mouth three times.
Despite the hour and her state of mind, Meredith looked terrific without putting on makeup or brushing her thick red hair. It was a good bet that someone this pretty wasn"t drinking alone.
"That"s what I would do too," I said. "Find a bar and drown my sorrows. Who"d you go out with?"
"Just insiders. Colleagues. Some who knew where Rachael would be hiding out, some who didn"t. It was a tough case to lose, so yeah, we all got pretty wasted, but we didn"t talk about where Rachael was going. Mostly we just b.i.t.c.hed and moaned about the Warlock."
"The what?"
"The Warlock-Dennis Woloch, the defense attorney. He totally worked his legal voodoo on the jury and convinced them that there was reasonable doubt. He did it pro bono. Rachael was lucky to get him."
Real lucky. If she"d had any other attorney, she"d have been convicted, stayed safely in jail, and not been kidnapped two days before the real killer confessed. Hats off to Mr. Warlock.
"Excuse me," Kylie said. She had been casually snooping around the small living room while I kept Meredith busy. "Who"s this?"
She picked up a framed black-and-white photo from an end table and brought it over to where I could see it. It was a cop in uniform. NYPD.
"That"s my dad," Meredith said. "He was killed in the line of duty."
"I"m sorry," Kylie said. "What happened?"
"He was working undercover trying to bring down this gang of Russian gun runners. Somehow his cover got blown, and they killed him." She paused. "But not before he took two of them out first. They gave him the Medal of Valor."
I took the picture from Kylie. He was a handsome man in his mid-thirties and a dead ringer for the cop I"d had drinks with last night. I no longer needed coffee. My adrenaline was going haywire.
"What was your dad"s name?" I said.
"David. David Casey."
I mentally kicked myself. "I know a Detective Dave Casey. He works Anti-Crime."