The 17th Suspect Read online

  I said, “So, what’s the next step?”

  Joe was telling me about the interview with Security Director Rollins next week when, of course, the phone rang.

  It was a weeknight, and to me that meant I was still on duty. I took the phone out of my jeans pocket and glanced at the caller ID. Joe watched me and shook his head no.

  “Brady,” I said into the phone. “What’s wrong?”

  He jumped right into it.

  “A homeless woman was shot dead on Mission near Spear. Same MO as the others. Point-blank range. No witnesses. But here’s something a little different. She was shot on our street.”

  “Say that again?”

  “She was shot on the south side of Mission. Our beat. Take it away, Lindsay. You’re lead investigator. Call Conklin. And you might want to compare notes with Stevens.”

  “When did this happen?”

  “Bystander called it into dispatch thirty minutes ago.

  Dispatch bounced it to me. Stay in touch.”

  “Brady, wait. I need all units, every cop with a pulse.”

  “You got it,” he said.

  With Brady, I considered it done.

  CHAPTER 59

  THE FRESH HOMICIDE on Mission Street required a Code 3 high-speed-with-lights-and-sirens response.

  I switched on all of that, and while driving through the fog, I worked myself up into a fine lather.

  This was it.

  I was finally going to have a shot at taking a bite out of the killer’s spree. This shooting was going to get a first-class investigation, which I hoped would end with the doer in an orange jumpsuit, looking at life without parole.

  Twenty-two minutes after Brady’s call, I pulled up to a crime scene that was eerily lit by the mistrimmed flashers and headlights of a dozen cruisers lined up at the curb. Unis had set up a perimeter, closing off Mission in both directions for two blocks down to Beale, with barricades at the cross streets.

  This was more like it. Thank you, Brady.

  I parked, ducked under the tape, and asked a uniformed cop to point me to the first officer.

  “That would be Sergeant Nardone. Over there. With the body.”

  I knew Bob Nardone. He was meticulous and irreverent, and I was glad he was on the scene. I called out to him and he lifted his hand. I pushed through the loose grouping of units to where he was standing by the victim.

  As first responding officer, he was responsible for cordoning off the street, sequestering witnesses, keeping bystanders from trashing the area, and briefing investigators.

  Nardone said, “Sergeant Boxer? What brings you out on a night like this?”

  “It’s my turn to howl at the moon. What’ve we got?”

  “Elderly woman, looks to me like she was down on her luck, and that was before someone pumped about six rounds into her.”

  “ID?”

  “See the strap? Her bag is under her body. Officer Anthony is talking to the guy who called it in. Tourist in the right place at the wrong time. He saw the body from his car.”

  Headlights sent shafts of light across the body. I turned on my torch and Nardone guided me in.

  I stepped around the pool of blood outlining the victim, who had fallen onto her side. I snapped photos with my phone, which would do until CSI came in with halogen lights and German lenses.

  I heard Conklin calling my name and turned to see him materialize out of the gloom.

  I told him what Nardone had told me. He bent to the body and peeled the dead woman’s green hat away from her face.

  He said, “Awwww, shit.”

  I looked over his shoulder. What I saw was like a hard punch to my heart.

  “Oh, no, Rich. No fucking way.”

  He said, “Proof that no good deed goes unpunished.”

  This was just wrong. How could Millie Cushing, a kind and gentle soul, be dead?

  I had to come in for a closer look. Her face and hair were soaked with blood. She’d taken one shot to her forehead and innumerable slugs to her body. The killer had stood close. He’d looked into her face and she’d looked into his. And he’d shot and shot and shot some more, until he was sure she was dead.

  This execution was overkill. Overkill meant rage or that the murder was personal—or both.

  Millie had come to me because of a wave of murders that had gone largely unnoticed. I’d encouraged her. I’d asked for her help. Standing over her body, I felt literally sick with sorrow and guilt. Had Millie been killed because she was working with me?

  “Is this my fault?” I asked Conklin.

  Conklin said, “Come on. No. Lindsay, here’s CSI. Let’s give them some room.”

  I heard a van door slide open and looked up to see Charlie Clapper step out onto the street. I was so glad that our forensics chief, my good friend, was on the job.

  Clapper said to me, “How is it we’re both pulling night shift?”

  “I know the victim, Charlie. Millie Cushing. She was my CI. Maybe the killer found out.”

  “Or he was looking for a victim,” said Conklin, “and she just happened to cross his path.”

  I said, “Sure. Could have happened like that.”

  But I was unconvinced.

  I crouched down next to Millie’s body. I don’t normally talk to dead people, but this was an exception, and I didn’t care who heard me.

  “I’m sorry, Millie. So sorry this happened to you.”

  CHAPTER 60

  YUKI WAS ENSCONCED in the snug green lady chair in front of the TV.

  It was after nine. Two hours ago Brady had said he’d be bringing home Thai food for dinner. So where was he? He hadn’t called. He hadn’t answered his phone. Was he under some kind of siege? Had he fallen into the sack with a lady friend? Or had he just forgotten about her?

  She was hungry and she was getting mad. It was becoming increasingly impossible to see him as the man “who loved her to death.”

  Yuki went to the kitchen and threw together a mayo and Kraft Singles sandwich. She ate it over the sink, then returned to the living room and retook her chair. She stretched out her legs on the footstool, then logged back in to her ThinkPad, glancing at her other necessary work tools—pens, sticky pad, coffee, pretzel sticks, clicker, phone—arrayed on the lamp table to her left.

  She was watching cable news out of the corner of her eye, while emptying her mailbox, when her phone vibrated. She shot her hand out to grab it and knocked over her mug. Milky coffee spread quickly across the table, over the edge, and onto her mother’s ancient carpet.

  Yuki shouted, “Nanda,” Japanese for “What the hell?” and grabbed the phone. She barked into it, “Brady?” as she ran to the kitchen for a dish towel.

  The voice said, “It’s Marc. I’ve been shot.”

  She could hardly hear him.

  “What? Marc? Where are you?”

  “Uh. In an ambulance.”

  She mopped up coffee while shouting over the wail of sirens in her ear, “Where were you shot? What’s your condition?”

  “Two blocks from my apartment. I was crossing the street to the dry cleaner when I, like, fell down. I didn’t even hear anything.”

  His voice faded out.

  “Marc. Marc. Can you hear me?”

  “I really hurt.”

  “Where on your body were you shot?” Yuki asked.

  “Right thigh. Paramedic said that the bullet went in and out the other side,” Marc said. “That’s what you call good fricking luck.”

  “It sure is. Thank God you’re okay.”

  He said, “It was dark, Yuki. If that bullet had hit my femoral artery, I would be dead now.” He laughed. “Maybe I should buy a lottery ticket.”

  Marc sounded hysterical. Yuki took her own voice down a couple of notches and said, “Where are they taking you?”

  “Metro, right?”

  She heard a woman’s voice saying, “We’re two minutes out.”

  “My parents are going to meet me there,” Marc said.


  “Okay,” she said. “Okay, that’s excellent. Marc, who did this?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t see anyone. My arms were full of laundry. Oh, shit. My laundry …”

  “Marc? Keep your head down,” Yuki said. “You have to talk to the police.”

  “You know what?” Marc said. “Now I’m scared.”

  “Cops will meet up with you at the hospital. Tell them what you know and what you think and have them call me, okay? Marc? Do you hear me?”

  “They’re telling me to put my phone away. Uh. Bye.”

  The phone went dead.

  Yuki stood in the doorway between the kitchen and living room, holding her phone, thinking through what Marc had just told her. Who wanted to shoot Marc? Had Briana Hill stalked him, fired on him? Was Briana that crazy?

  Yuki had Sex Crimes officer Phyllis Chase on speed dial. She punched the button and waited impatiently for Chase to pick up.

  “Phyllis, it’s Yuki. Marc Christopher was just shot … No, it’s not fatal. He’s on the way to Metro. Have someone take his statement, and pick up Briana Hill. I’ll meet you at the Hall.”

  CHAPTER 61

  YUKI STOOD IN the observation room with her arms tightly crossed, intently watching Briana Hill’s interrogation through the two-way mirror.

  The interview room on the other side of the glass was closet size, furnished with a table pushed up against a grimy wall and three straight-backed aluminum chairs that were all occupied.

  Inspectors Phyllis Chase and Phil Thompson from Sex Crimes sat catercorner to each other. Briana Hill faced them and the mirrored window. The camera in the corner of the ceiling recorded it all.

  Hill looked wrung out. Yuki knew that she had been arrested at her apartment after returning from the gym. She was wearing gray sweatpants, her hair bunched up in an off-center knot at the top of her head, and she was red faced from crying.

  Chase, who had confiscated a pistol from Hill’s gym bag, was saying, “You know you can’t have a gun, Briana. So right away you’re in trouble here. What’s going on?”

  “I’m getting hate mail and vicious phone calls,” Briana said angrily. “I’m getting death threats. I think I’m being followed. What am I supposed to do?”

  “Stay home. Keep your door locked,” Chase said.

  “I have to eat,” she shouted. “I went to the deli on Duboce and Sanchez for soup and a sandwich sometime around lunch. Then the gym tonight at around eight, and I was there for an hour. There’s got to be cameras all over that place. You can see for yourself.”

  Martinez said, “So from eight to nine you were at the gym? That’s your story?”

  “Yes. Something like that.”

  Chase asked her, “And before you went to the gym?”

  “I was at home. The doorman can say when I left.”

  “Okay, Briana,” said Martinez. “We’ll check your alibi.

  Or you can save us a lot of trouble. I know this Christopher guy is a miserable pain in your butt, so look, you didn’t kill him. If you did shoot him, now’s the time to say so. I guarantee if you speak up, it will all go better for you.”

  “I did not shoot him. Send my gun to your … your lab or just smell it. It hasn’t been fired in two years.”

  “This here,” said Martinez, digging a plastic bag out of his shirt pocket, “is a gunpowder residue test. I’m going to apply some goop to your hands. It’s not going to hurt.”

  “I don’t have to agree to that. Do I?” Hill asked incredulously. “I want my lawyer and I want to call him now.”

  “In a minute,” said Martinez. “But first show me your hands, palms up.”

  “And if I refuse?”

  “You can chill in a holding cell with fourteen or fifteen pissed-off prostitutes until we get a court order.”

  “Briana,” interjected the motherly Phyllis Chase. “Saying no to a GSR test makes it kind of look like you’ve got something to hide. If you didn’t fire a gun, this will clear you. You want that.”

  Yuki knew it wouldn’t clear Briana absolutely. She could have worn and discarded gloves. She could have washed her hands before Chase and Martinez picked her up.

  The gun would tell the truth.

  Hill said, “Fine. Be my guest.” She held out her hands. Martinez put on latex gloves and applied the test. Then he exited the room, leaving Chase alone with the distraught Briana Hill.

  Chase was saying, “You’ll get to make your phone call in a little while, Briana. First we have to process you.”

  “I didn’t shoot him!”

  “You have a gun, dear, and it was loaded. You violated your bond.”

  “Oh, my God, no. Please. Don’t send me back to jail!”

  The door to the interview room opened and two cops came in.

  Chase said, “Stand up, Briana. Put your hands behind your back.”

  Yuki watched the cops cuff the woman, who had not long ago had an extremely promising future. No more.

  Hill was crying as she was led out. She turned her head to look at Chase.

  “Why is this happening to me? No, let me tell you. He’s setting me up. He set me up again.”

  Martinez came into the observation room and said to Yuki, “Ms. Castellano, the GSR test was negative. We’ll send the gun and her clothes to the lab for testing.”

  “Thanks, Martinez. What do you think?”

  He shrugged. “She’s a sad case. I like her, but I don’t trust her.”

  “Check the security tapes in her apartment building and at the gym. See if her alibi holds up.”

  Yuki called Brady. It was after midnight. He picked up, sounding disoriented.

  Yuki asked, “Are you sleeping?”

  “Was,” he said. “Where are you?”

  “Do you mind heating up the noodles?”

  “Noodles? Oh, shit. I forgot.”

  “You’re a bum, Brady. You know that?”

  Yuki made a detour to the vending machine on the second floor and spent four bucks on sugar and carbs before going downstairs to her car. She slammed her car into gear, and by the time she got home, she was steaming.

  CHAPTER 62

  CONKLIN AND I crowded into Brady’s office without invitation the morning after Millie Cushing’s murder.

  My sadness and sense of responsibility had no place in this meeting, so I gave my account while keeping personal thoughts to myself. I wrapped up our report by saying, “We’re canvassing homeless shelters today to get as much info as we can on Millie, her friends, enemies, habits. And we’ll be looking into her family and so forth.

  “We need help,” I said. “We could use Nardone and Anthony, also Chi and McNeil and any volunteers. I put in a call to Stevens. As you suggested.”

  Brady okayed my request for help, then said, “Conklin, I need a moment with Boxer.”

  When we were alone, he said, “I got a call from Hon.”

  “Oh?” I felt a pang of dread. What now? I gripped the arms of my chair.

  “Stevens filed a complaint against you.”

  “Against me? What was the complaint, exactly?”

  “Interfering with his crime scene. Wrecking the chain of command. You’re going to hear about this in person.”

  I said, “How so?”

  “Hon is holding a hearing to consider Stevens’s complaint against you and vice versa. After that he and the panel will send their recommendation to the chief.”

  “When is this supposed to happen?”

  “Thursday morning. IAD offices at nine.”

  “You mean tomorrow?” I asked.

  “I’m afraid so.”

  I’d never even heard of a face-to-face IAD hearing before. I didn’t know what to expect. But this I knew: I’d stood up to Stevens before. I’d do it again.

  Brady said, “Jacobi will determine disciplinary action, if any. So dismissal of charges is possible. Desk duty is possible. Suspension is possible. If Stevens is found to be bending the law, that’s something else again. Either way … th
is’ll get cleared up.”

  He shook his head.

  I knew what he was thinking: I told you so. I was wishing I had listened to him.

  “Levant will be there,” Brady said, referring to Central’s renowned Homicide lieutenant. “I’ll be there, too. You’re entitled to representation, so if you want a lawyer or union rep, git on the phone and make your calls.”

  I had estimated a full week of work ahead of me on Millie Cushing’s murder. It would have been basic door-to-door detective work, starting at the beginning. I didn’t even know if my informant’s name was Mildred or Millicent, or if Millie Cushing was a made-up name entirely.

  And now digging into this case was going to be road-blocked by the IAD hearing.

  I asked, “If IAD finds against me, what happens to the Cushing case?”

  “It’s up to the chief. Now please leave me with all this … stuff.” He looked down at the multiple tall stacks of papers on his desk and threw up his hands.

  I got out.

  CHAPTER 63

  IT WAS EARLY morning chez Molinari, and a shaft of sunlight was piercing the south-facing windows.

  I had to present my case to a panel of Internal Affairs Division honchos in an hour. I was still in pj’s. Unbeknownst to Joe, I had thrown up that morning. While standing in the shower, I did some fourth-grade math in the condensation on the tiles, adding up days and weeks since Joe and I had made love in a danger zone.

  My math was sketchy.

  I might have forgotten a half-asleep morning tumble or miscalculated my cycle. It was pretty clear that somehow I’d screwed up and that I was an idiot. Correction. A pregnant idiot.

  I draped Joe’s robe over my pajamas and went to the kitchen table, where he had set out a plate of buttered toast, a jar of blackberry jam, and a cup of tea.

  Joe said to me, “Sit, Lindsay. How many eggs?”

  “None. Thanks, though. I’m a little edgy about the hearing.”

  I sipped tea. I nibbled a corner of the toast. I wondered if there would be time today to go to CVS and pick up a pregnancy kit.