CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
New York City
Patrick met them at the small private airport in northern Virginia where Sean kept his Cessna. “I have a meeting with Stokes’s partner, and with the coroner’s office, but we need to get going—it’s Saturday, and I convinced the coroner to come in on his day off. I don’t want to keep him waiting.”
Lucy psyched herself up for the flight. She’d flown since the crash landing three months ago when she and Noah Armstrong, who’d been an Air Force pilot, had been shot down in the Adirondack Mountains. But each time she boarded a plane, her heart raced and she had to force herself to remain calm.
While Sean ran through the pre-flight check, Patrick came over to her. “You okay, Sis?”
She nodded. To change the subject she asked, “What happened with Brandy?”
“What did Sean tell you?”
“Nothing—just that you said it wasn’t going to last.”
Patrick shrugged. “Sean has a big mouth.”
“He wanted to know what I knew, which is less than he does. I thought you liked her.”
Patrick sighed. “She’s beautiful and smart, but I just don’t feel it, you know? I’m going through the motions and it shouldn’t be like that. She called me on it last night, and I let her walk away.”
“Is Mom getting on your case because you’re next up to get married?”
Patrick paled. “Don’t even say it. I’m not ready.”
“You’re going to be thirty-six next month.”
“I’m young at heart.”
Lucy laughed and hugged him. “It is Mom. Don’t let her push you.”
“She has a long arm, even three thousand miles away.” In a low voice he said, “She’s planning on setting me up with Gabrielle Santana when I go home for Christmas.”
Lucy stared wide-eyed. “What? You can’t.”
Lucy knew Gabrielle, even though the woman was three years older than her. Like the Kincaids, the Santana family was large and Catholic. In high school, Lucy had dated Gabrielle’s brother for two weeks, and even in two weeks the stories she’d heard from him about all five of his sisters, and in particular Gabrielle, had Lucy both envious and terrified. Gabrielle had a wild reputation.
“Apparently, Gabrielle is the first Santana ever to get divorced. Mom and Mrs. Santana think I would be good for her. Why do I feel like I’m being set up to tame a shrew?”
“So this means we have four months to find you a girlfriend.”
Patrick stared at her as if she’d suggested he become a monk. “No. This means we have four months to find me a job that will keep me out of San Diego at Christmas.”
Sean approached. “Christmas?”
“Nothing,” Patrick said.
Lucy smiled and whispered, “I’ll tell you later.”
“You mean this is about the girl your mom is trying to set Patrick up with.”
“Shut up, Rogan,” Patrick mumbled.
Sean grinned. “Plane’s ready; let’s go.”
At least the conversation with Patrick went a long way in alleviating Lucy’s apprehension about the plane ride, and the hour passed quickly while Sean ran through a list of women he could set Patrick up with just for the three days he would be in San Diego. Patrick mostly pretended to sleep and ignored him.
Sean landed them in Newark just after three that afternoon. Both he and Patrick rented cars, because they were on a tight schedule if Sean was truly going to get Lucy back by 6:00 p.m. tomorrow. He didn’t believe for a minute that she would follow through on her threat to quit, and he wasn’t going to make her late.
Sean turned onto the Jersey Turnpike heading toward Manhattan. “So that’s what this whole dating kick he’s been on has been about. Finding a girl to bring home to your mom?”
“I guess so. But honestly, I’m glad that’s all it is, because I was worried about him. He’s not usually like this. Anyway, what’s our plan for tonight?”
“Suzanne is meeting us at a bar near the Bureau along with the NYPD detective working the case.”
“Vic Panetta?”
“Some guy named DeLucca, out of Queens. Weber was stabbed in the parking lot of Citi Field in the middle of a baseball game. Money and jewelry stolen.”
“She was wearing expensive jewelry at a baseball game?”
“According to her insurance records, she always wore her mother’s wedding ring on her right ring finger. It was valued at over fifteen thousand dollars. Her friends said she never took it off.”
“So her attacker may have asked her to hand it over and she refused?”
“Could be. We’ll know more when we read the reports. Suzanne didn’t tell me much of anything over the phone. Except she wasn’t there for the game—didn’t have a ticket—but apparently planned to meet someone.”
“No witnesses?”
“None came forward. No security cameras in the area—only on the entrances and exits.”
“And Weber herself?”
“I know what you know.”
“I thought we were retracing Tony’s steps.”
“We are. Suzanne will give us the rundown, but he made at least one stop after he left her and that’s what we’re going to follow up on.”
“And Suzanne is fine with us helping?”
“Hans called her already. He wanted this off-the-books because he didn’t know what Tony was up to and he didn’t want anything in the press.” Sean glanced at Lucy. “And I want to know what’s in her files.”
“Why did we have to come here? Couldn’t we have gotten the files e-mailed or faxed? Talked to Suzanne on the phone?”
“We could have, but I wanted to get you away. Last time we were in New York you said you wanted to come back, and this is our chance to have a night off, just you and me.” He glanced at her. “You’re okay with that, right?”
“Of course I’m okay with it.”
“Good. Because I missed you and I only have twenty-four hours having you all to myself. In between this investigation.”
“Tonight, Sean, will be ours.”
She smiled, and Sean was relieved. While he knew Lucy loved him, he was the more romantic one. He relished these moments when they could get away. And every vacation they’d had to date had ended in disaster. So he wasn’t calling this a vacation, but he was going to treat tonight as such.
The time away would help Lucy regroup and think clearly before she decided what to do about Hans, as well as how to deal with the possibility that Tony’s death might not have been of natural causes. Sean wasn’t convinced it was murder—could a killer get away with two murders, in different states, at different times, staged as heart attacks? That would be pushing it. However, if it worked once, why not again? They needed to find out if there was any connection between Stokes and Presidio other than the McMahon case.
Sean drove straight to the Park Central Hotel where he and Lucy had stayed in February when he was searching for his missing cousin. He grinned at the smile on Lucy’s face. “Surprise.”
“You’re sneaky.” She leaned up and kissed him. “I love it.”
He glanced at his watch. “We’re going to have to hustle to meet Suzanne by six.”
They dropped their bags in their room—which had a view of Central Park—and left the hotel. Sean hailed a taxi. “We’re not driving?” she said.
Sean always preferred to drive, but he didn’t like traffic. “Don’t want to deal with parking,” he said.
It was less than a ten-minute cab ride and Lucy and Sean walked into the bar and grill. Lucy spotted Suzanne sitting at a table, facing the door. A plainclothes cop sat next to her. Lucy watched as the cop handed Suzanne a twenty.
“What was that for?” Sean asked.
“I was right. I said you’d be here within forty-eight hours. DeLucca doubted me. Good to see you both.”
After introductions, Suzanne got down to business.
“I’ll let you look at the files, but you’re not taking a copy.” She stared at Sean. “I’ll be watching you.”
He smiled. “I don’t want a copy.”
“You want to talk to the sister. Why?”
“See if she’s lying.”
“About?”
“Anything.”
Suzanne shrugged. “My gut says she’s clean, but that’s fine with me. And Kip Todd, Weber’s assistant?”
“Ditto.”
“So you’re checking up on me? Didn’t you learn last time that I know how to do my job?”
Lucy said, “We trust you, Suzanne. It’s my story I don’t want getting out. And Kirsten has finally started to get her life back. She’s in Los Angeles, going back to school; what happened here is buried. I want to make sure Rosemary Weber’s assistant isn’t planning on writing the book.”
“And that’s the only reason you came to New York?”
Sean nodded. “And to find out where Tony Presidio went. Off-the-record.”
Suzanne nodded. “Dr. Vigo called me. I told him exactly what happened, sent him my report. I also told him that Tony had some ideas he didn’t share with me. But his strategy paid off.”
“Strategy?”
“Tony leaked to the press that we didn’t think robbery was the motive, and bam, this afternoon we get a call from one of the pawnshops DeLucca briefed. A junkie walks in and pawns the ring. We got his prints.”
DeLucca said, “A street thief from Queens, Jimmy Bartz, I have patrols out looking for him at all his haunts. We’ll have him before midnight.”
“And that’s it?”
“Maybe; we’ll know when we interrogate him.”
“And why would a street thief kill Weber?”
“Could be that he robbed her after she was killed,” DeLucca said.
Sean assessed the cop. “You don’t think he killed her.”
He shrugged. “I don’t know Bartz, but my buddies in Property Crimes laughed their asses off when I said we were looking at him for murder. Stealing purses, rolling a drunk, smashing a window to grab shopping bags—that’s Bartz. Not a stiletto in the heart.”
“But he could have grabbed the ring if he found her in the parking lot,” Suzanne said. It was obvious that they had discussed this theory.
DeLucca nodded, but Sean sensed he thought something was fishy about the whole deal.
“Do you know Bob Stokes, a cop down in Newark?” Sean asked.
“Should I?” Suzanne said.
“Weber’s first book was dedicated to him. Presidio’s phone records show he tried to call Stokes Thursday evening driving from the airport to Quantico. He died of a heart attack.”
“Stokes or Presidio?”
“Both,” Lucy said. “Bob Stokes died last month. Did his name pop up in any of Weber’s files?”
Suzanne looked through her notes. “He was in her address book, that’s it. Why was Tony trying to call him?”
Lucy said, “He was very upset about the missing McMahon files, and he called me about his own personal file—he wanted to see it as soon as he got back.”
“Did you bring it?”
Lucy hesitated, then said, “It disappeared.”
“You lost it?”
“No,” Lucy said, “it disappeared from his office between the time of his heart attack and when Hans arrived the next day.”
“This is starting to smell like a conspiracy,” DeLucca said. “Maybe your federal colleagues are trying to cover something up.”
Suzanne hit him on the arm, hard. “Shut up, Joe.”
Sean said, “Lucy’s the only one who’s recently read Tony’s file, so we hope if she goes everywhere Tony did, she’ll figure out what Tony was thinking.”
“It’s a long shot,” Lucy admitted.
“After watching you analyze that psycho nut job back in February, I’ll put my money on you,” Suzanne said.
Lucy said, “So essentially, from what you’ve said and the reports show, the victim was most likely meeting someone at Citi Field, a baseball stadium, in the middle of a baseball game, was killed, and either the killer took the jewelry to make it look like a robbery, or this Bartz guy stole the ring himself after the fact.”
“Bingo.”
“But,” Suzanne said, “what’s making me crazy is why did he pawn the ring today, four days after her murder, but only hours after the newspaper came out with the deliberate leak to the press?”
“It’s like he wants you to think it’s a robbery,” Sean said. “Not very smart.”
“Not smart fits Bartz,” DeLucca said.
“Why meet someone at a baseball stadium in the first place?” Lucy asked.
“Citi Field is very family friendly,” DeLucca said. “We don’t get a lot of real trouble out there. It’s public; she might have thought it was safe.”
“I take it no security cameras,” Sean said.
“Nothing on the section of the parking lot where she was killed.” DeLucca looked from Lucy to Sean. “Is there anything you know that I should?” he asked. “I don’t like surprises, I don’t really like P.I.’s doing police work, and I’m not a fan of the feds.” He glanced at Suzanne. “Except blondie here.”
“Screw you, DeLucca.”
Lucy caught the smile between the two. They had been friends—or more—for a long time.
Lucy said, “If we learn anything that will aid in your investigation, you have my word that we’ll give it to you. Right, Suzanne?”
“I’m still not one hundred percent sure about this,” DeLucca said. He took out a folder and handed it to Sean. Sean turned it so both he and Lucy could see. DeLucca walked them through the photo evidence.
Nothing jumped out. There was extensive blood at the scene—the victim had been killed in front of her vehicle, then dragged approximately five feet to hide her body between two cars. All the cars in the area had been printed and cleared. The knife had never been recovered. No blood trail.
Lucy asked, “Was there anything about the murder that was never released to the media?”
“Only one thing—there was an inscription on the inside of the ring. We gave pawnshops and a few CIs a photo of the ring and the information that there was an inscription, but not what the inscription said. ‘Love is patient, love is kind.’ That’s how we IDed the ring and Bartz.”
“From Corinthians,” Lucy muttered.
Sean’s phone vibrated. He ignored the text message but hoped it was info he was waiting for. He turned to Suzanne. “What’s going on with the library archives? Are there computer logs?”
“Yes and no,” Suzanne said. “Everyone signs in. Borrowed material is logged in the computer, but if they’re simply looking, they have free run of the place.”
“So either the documents are still there—hidden or misplaced—or someone with knowledge of the system took them.”
“It’s a large box.”
Sean leaned forward. “I’ll bet I can find a half-dozen ways to grab anything I want from the library and disappear with it.”
“Not everyone is you, Rogan,” Suzanne said.
“But,” he continued as if she hadn’t spoken, “if I wanted the information to disappear, I’d cloak it. Put it in a different box. Do you know the last person who pulled the box?”
“That’s one of the problems,” Suzanne said. “The box has been there for three years. No one has ever checked it out. And don’t even think about asking for a list of everyone who has checked out boxes from the archives—you’re talking about thousands of people.”
Lucy said, “If someone at Quantico stole Tony’s file from his office, they may have also taken the files from the archives.”
Sean glanced at her. “You’re brilliant. At my college library, I had to have a card to access much of the building, and definitely to view most of the research material.”
Suzanne nodded. “I see what you’re thinking. If there’s anyone with access to Quantico who also has a Columbia library card. It’s a place to start.”
“Still a long shot, but not quite as long,” Sean said.
Lucy frowned. “It’s easy to check the travel of federal staff, and anyone at Quantico would know that.”
“We don’t know when the box was removed from the library,” Suzanne said. “It could have been months or years ago.”
“And,” Sean said, “it might be someone who had a friend who was a student, or a visitor who found a flaw in the security system.”
Suzanne made a note. “Dr. Vigo asked for a report tonight. I’ll let him know your theory and let him run interference with Quantico. Thanks.”
They exchanged contact information and parted ways.
“Back to the hotel?” Lucy asked.
Sean glanced at his watch. “Let’s go meet your brother for dinner.”
“In Newark?”
“At the hotel. Patrick is good. He got exactly what we needed, took the train into the city.” Sean hailed a taxi. “We make a great team. And there’s nothing I’d like more than to have you working for RCK. You’re name’s already on the door.”
Sean opened the taxi door and Lucy slid in first.
“Maybe I should,” she said quietly.
He gave the driver the name of their hotel, then leaned over and kissed Lucy lightly. “I know you should. But on your terms, Luce. Because you want to, not because you think it’s your only option.”