He left the office and headed to Tribeca, where the pharmacy manager, John Rowe, was quick to help him. He pulled the receipt from the records on the main computer, and he was even able to tell Craig who had sold the phone because each employee had an ID number that was associated with every sale.
The employee in question, however, wasn’t in, and Rowe was unable to reach her by phone. She was due in to work at 4:00 p.m., so in the interim Craig returned to the office to go over his notes on everything they knew—and everything they didn’t.
He decided to return to Rikers Island, and asked Eagan to pave the way for him.
Even with Eagan wielding his considerable power, Craig ended up standing by his car for an hour before he was let in. This time, he asked to see all four men together. That caused a further delay. They had different attorneys, and getting them all to agree to an interview was no easy task. Craig finally got them to agree by pointing out that finding the killers could only be a plus when their own clients went to trial.
Eventually, they were all arrayed before him at a table, each prisoner with an attorney at his side.
Sam Banner, Robert Stella, Lenny Wiener and Mark O’Malley all stared at him with matching looks of suspicion.
“First,” Craig said earnestly, “I want to thank you sincerely for seeing me. I’m not condoning what you did—squirt-gun larceny is still larceny—but you didn’t kill anyone. If you ask me, you should all be furious that these killers imitated you so well that they were convinced that if you were caught, you’d be tried for their crimes, as well.”
The foursome looked at one another.
O’Malley stepped up as their spokesperson. “We’ve talked to you, we’ve talked to the cops and we’ve talked to Miss Finnegan. We would gladly tell you who the killers are, but the truth is, we don’t know.”
“And,” Stella added angrily, “we don’t know how they knew our exact MO, either.”
“None of you spoke to anyone else about any of this?” Craig asked.
“I swear on my mother’s bones,” O’Malley said solemnly.
“All right, you’ve given us a list of places where you met, but now I need more lists from you. Friends, family, even acquaintances you bump into on a regular basis. Anyone with whom something just might have slipped.”
O’Malley’s attorney pointed out that they weren’t required to do any such thing and that it could even work against them, then recommended silence.
Craig didn’t blame the attorney; it was the man’s job to protect his client.
To his relief, though, O’Malley didn’t take the advice. He looked around at the others. “I say we do our best to help nail the bastards.”
The others nodded.
“When do you want these lists?” Wiener asked.
“I’ll wait,” Craig said quietly, and motioned for a guard, who arranged for pens and paper. He tried not to fidget impatiently as the men worked on their lists.
At one point he excused himself and put through a call to Mike, who was in the process of changing shifts with Marty. They arranged to meet at the pharmacy to see what they could find out about the mystery phone.
Finally, with the four lists in his hand, Craig left Rikers. He felt a growing urgency as he wove through traffic. As he drove, he used Bluetooth to call Wally back at the office and, keeping one eye on the traffic and the other on the pages propped on the steering wheel, dictated the names, many of which were duplicates, from the lists.
He arrived at the pharmacy a few minutes after 4:00 p.m. Mike was already there.
“Marty all settled in?” Craig asked.
“He is. He’s a good kid, you know, and he’s going to be a good agent. Yeah, he’s by the book. But he’ll watch over Kieran like a hawk. And since I suspect you’re interested, Bobby O’Leary is doing very well. He’s starting to chomp at the bit. He’s missing his bar stool at Finnegan’s.”
“They’re not letting him out of the hospital for a few days, right?” Craig asked. At the hospital, with a cop on guard at all times, Bobby was far safer than he would be out on the streets.
“Until the end of the week,” Mike told him.
Until the end of the week.
Some cases took months, others took years. And now all Bobby had was a few more days of relative safety.
He didn’t voice his unease; he knew Mike was as aware as he was of the difficulty of such a short timeline.
They were standing at the back of the store when a door between athlete’s foot medications and heating pads opened and the manager stepped out. He saw Mike and looked questioningly at Craig.
“My partner,” Craig explained, and he introduced the two men.
“Yes, of course. Would you like to come into the office? Bailey Headley is on her way to speak with you.”
They had barely entered the small one-desk office cluttered with samples, from condoms in bright yellow wrappers to children’s toothpaste decorated with popular television dinosaurs, when Bailey came in. She was in her midthirties, mixed race, a pretty woman sporting a multicolored Afro.
Craig produced his badge and thanked her for seeing them.