Cold Hit (34 page)

“I’m telling you, Mercer and I were there with them. No such thing anywhere we looked. The only evidence they vouchered was the pair of sunglasses. Whatever this appointment journal or calendar is, it’s probably in his apartment, not the studio.”

“Well, if we can find the niece who took Gina Varelli home the other night, maybe we can convince her to let us do a consent search. If not, I’ll draft another warrant in the morning.” I looked at my watch. “It’s already almost four o’clock.”

The shifts had changed, and detectives working the day tour were signing out while those doing four-to-twelves were coming on. Even the teams that had finished their official tours were working overtime, without pay, because of Mercer.

Jimmy Halloran opened the door. “Your secretary’s on line two. Wanna pick up?”

“Sure. Laura? Everything okay?”

“Just a couple of things you need to know about. Pat McKinney is having a meeting at ten tomorrow with a few of the senior trial counsel. Catherine said to tell you that he hasn’t given them any specific agenda yet, but she assumes he’s planning to pick someone from the group to assign to prosecute Mercer’s case.”

“Thank her for letting me know. I’ll be there.”

“You’re not invited, Alex. That’s the point. That’s what Catherine wanted me to get across to you.”

Damn it. McKinney would do everything in his power, as deputy chief of the Trial Division, to make me uncomfortable as a witness to Mercer’s shooting. I wanted to have a say in who would prosecute the gunman when he was caught. “Can you find a number for Rod Squires? Scout around for me, will you?” The chief of the division, my friend and ally, was also on summer vacation. If I could enlist his aid before morning, I’d have some control over the selection process.

“Let me call Rose Malone. I’m sure she’ll know how to find him. And you also need to know that the man who tried to run you down last week, Wakim Wakefield? Well, he was back here at the building today, trying to get upstairs to file a complaint with Battaglia about you.”

“Did security let him through?” That’s a bit too close for comfort.

“No. His name was on their daily chart.” The security crew in the lobby at 1 Hogan Place kept a roster of names of people not welcome in our office — an ever-expanding list of psychos, malcontents, and cranks who were expert at creating disturbances once they got inside.

“Was he arrested?” I asked with some hesitancy.

“No. The guard called up to the squad to get some detectives to come talk to him, but there’s only one elevator working today, and by the time somebody got downstairs, Wakefield was already gone. Mr. Battaglia himself called about it. Made me promise to ask you if you were using your bodyguards.”

“Don’t mention to him that I groaned when I told you yes,” I answered. “I’m smack in the middle of a police station right now, and unless Chapman goes ballistic ’cause I tell him to wipe the mustard off the side of his mouth, I’ll be perfectly safe. I’ll stay with him a few more hours, and then he’ll pass me back off to the D.A.’s Squad. Tell the boss I’m being a very good soldier, okay? And please see if you can get a number for any government officials in Florence. We need to find Marco Varelli’s widow.”

“Alex, it’s after ten at night over there. I’ll see what I can do, but I doubt I’ll have anything for you until tomorrow. And one last thing.”

“Some good news, right?”

“Not exactly. Pat McKinney dropped by. He told me to remind you that you are to stay away from the hospital. No visits to Mercer, no talking about the case. He doesn’t want you comparing notes and conforming your stories to fit each other’s recollections. Sorry, Alex.”

“Don’t worry, Laura. I know you’re just the messenger.”

I hung up and Chapman asked what the news was, so I told him about Wakefield.

“Jeez, blondie, if it wasn’t for me you’d have no friends at all. Let’s take off. Preston Mattox will see us at his office whenever we get there.”

“I thought you said everyone else would have to be interviewed
here
. ”

“What happened to your sense of humor, kid? D’you lose it yesterday? This guy’s got his architectural offices in a penthouse suite on Fifth Avenue, overlooking Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, with about fifty employees in the surrounding rooms. I’ll get you home in one piece tonight.”

Mike called the hospital and spoke with Mercer’s dad, who told him that Mercer had been sitting up for a few hours in the early afternoon and now was sleeping again. We gathered our things to leave the squad. Jimmy Halloran had been kept over to do back-to-back tours, to man the phone and hot line, since City Hall had announced a reward for information leading to the arrest of the shooter.

“Hey, K.D., give me a beep if anything comes in on Bailey before your shift is done. We’ve got an interview to do before we stop off at the hospital.”

With that we were on our way to the offices of Mattox Partners, and our first introduction to another one of Deni’s suitors, Preston Mattox. His secretary announced us and we were led into the stark glass-enclosed headquarters of the prominent architect, which looked south toward the spires of the great church below.

My first reaction was surprise. He appeared to be about fifty years old. He was in good shape and dressed in a navy suit, exuding a much more businesslike air than the art-world denizens we had encountered throughout the last week. But what struck me most about Mattox was that he looked truly distraught, and as though he had been crying for days on end. There was a hollow contour around his eyes and a lifelessness emanating from within, which hit a chord in the core of me that wanted someone to be mourning for Denise Caxton.

Once more Chapman and I made our introductions.

“Why don’t you have a seat?” he said, coming out from behind his desk and pulling three chairs around in a circle. “Sorry I didn’t get back to you sooner. I really had to get away from here after Deni was killed. Lowell made it clear that I wasn’t welcome at the service, and I just needed to be somewhere else.”

Mattox was cordial, but he seemed distracted and unable even to muster a smile.

“Have you made any progress in solving Deni’s case?”

“Not as much as we’d like,” I answered.

“I’ve stopped reading newspaper accounts, so I don’t know what you’re up to. The stories about her all made her sound so vacuous and unpleasant. She was a most unusual creature — clever, funny, warm. She craved affection, and I loved giving it to her.”

Mike showed unusual restraint in not mentioning Deni’s other liaisons. He let Mattox do it for us. “You’ve probably talked with some of Deni’s other friends. Obviously, I wasn’t the only man in her life, but I was fighting hard for that slot.” He stood up and walked to the window, looking out and not speaking for several seconds. “I had asked Denise to marry me.”

“But she wasn’t even divorced yet,” Mike said.

Mattox rested against the ledge of the windowsill. “No, but I was urging her to speed up the process. Stop fighting with Lowell and walk away from him. Frankly, it made me sick just to think of them living under the same roof. I don’t quite have the art collection that her husband does, but short of that, there wasn’t anything she wanted that I would not have given her.”

“Do you know why she didn’t leave?”

“Really why? Probably I don’t know. None of the reasons she ever gave me made much sense. ‘Just wait,’ she used to say. ‘Don’t rush me.’ She was obstinate about it and I was madly in love, so I didn’t push her. It was the only thing we ever fought over. And she could fight,” Mattox said, almost amused at the memory of it.

“What do you mean?”

“Deni was a battler. She looked so soft, so fragile. But she had an iron will, and if something got under her skin, she’d go to the mats for it. It was one of her best traits as a friend — a tenacious loyalty that endeared her to anyone who got close enough.” He took a handkerchief from his pants pocket and held it over his mouth as he cleared his throat, and then tamped the cloth against his eyes. “I keep thinking of how she must have died. I know it wouldn’t have been without a struggle.”

So many victims of sexual assault had described to me their reactions to the assailant. The greatest number submitted to life-threatening words or display of a weapon. Others chose to attempt to fight back. Some were successful and became survivors. For many, the resistance served only to aggravate the attacker and caused him to use more force, which resulted sometimes in serious injury to the woman, and often in her death. No one could second-guess the decisions each victim had to make in the seconds when she was confronted by a rapist.

Mike tried to direct the conversation back to the areas that interested him.

“Did you have any kind of relationship with Lowell Caxton?”

“A casual one. I’d known him for years — never did any work for him, but we traveled in the same social circles here in town. Always been a perfect gentleman to me.”

“How about to Deni?”

“I think I understood him a lot better than she did, to tell you the truth. I don’t think she had any business trying to make him let go of some of the artwork that had been in his family for decades. It wasn’t the prettiest side of Deni, as you probably know by now.”

“What about her concerns that he was trying to have her killed?”

Mattox frowned at that suggestion. “I ridiculed the idea at the time. Sort of makes me crazy to think about that now. It could just as easily be Lowell behind all this as it could be anyone, I guess.” He looked up at Mike. “I don’t envy your job, Detective. Saw an article in the paper not long ago. Said there are more murderers in the United States than there are medical doctors. More murderers than college professors. It’s mind-boggling, really.” He talked on about the Caxtons’ marriage for more than fifteen minutes, until Mike changed the questions to ask about Bryan Daughtry.

“Never had any use for him, Mr. Chapman. It was a major point of contention between Deni and me. Whenever we talked seriously about the future, I made it clear that there was no room in it for Daughtry. He’s a despicable piece of — well, human garbage.” Mattox walked along the window on the far side of the room, dragging his finger along the sill. “Why you people never nailed him for the murder of that Scandinavian girl upstate escapes me completely. Whatever he does, he somehow lands on his feet each time. Makes me sick just to think about it.”

“Did you spend any time at Caxton Due, their new gallery?” I asked.

“Not when Bryan was around. I’d gone there on several occasions with Deni, when she went to check on shipments that were being unloaded. She found all that very exciting — loved to watch the men break down the packing boxes and lift some painting or sculpture out of them. She was like a little kid on Christmas morning, poring over every inch of the canvas, examining the artist’s signature, checking out the condition of the frame.

“I’d go just to see her reaction. Frankly, the art she and Daughtry were interested in did nothing for me. I’m rather a classicist, as you can see from my work.” He pointed at the office walls, which displayed the plans and finished results of some of his buildings. There was an elegance of line and style that didn’t mesh with the contemporary works we had seen in Chelsea.

“Do you know Varelli? Marco Varelli?”

“Certainly. I’d actually met Marco many times.”

“With Deni?”

“I’d met him through clients long before I started to date Deni. But I’d never been to his atelier until she took me there. He was a genius — a lovely man.”

“When were you there — at his studio, I mean?”

“A couple of times this spring. I don’t remember exactly, but once or twice, probably in June or July.”

“Why did Deni take you there?”

“She usually went when she had a painting that she wanted Varelli to look at.”

“Like a Vermeer?” Mike asked.

I wanted to slow him down. I could see Preston Mattox stiffen when Mike mentioned the artist’s name. If he jumped into the territory of stolen artworks too quickly, I was afraid he’d lose his cooperative subject.

“So, you two have bought into all the gossip on the circuit. Denise Caxton and the masterpieces from the Gardner heist. When you find the goods, be sure and let me know,” he said, scowling at Chapman as though he had made a terrible mistake.

“Deni ever talk to you about the Vermeer? Or the Rembrandt?”

Mattox was angry now. “She wasn’t a thief, Detective. Deni made more than her share of enemies, but she was an awfully decent woman when you gave her a chance to be. There was no way she was involved with the scum who’ve been peddling stolen property. She didn’t need that kind of trouble. Between the life that Lowell had built for her and what I was willing to provide when she married me, there wasn’t any reason to debase herself with something that would land her in jail.”

While Mattox was hot, Mike decided it was a good moment to offer him up the name of his rival. “And Frank Wrenley? Where did he fit in Deni’s life?”

“As far out of the picture as I could move him, Detective.”

“Why? What did you know about him?”

“Not enough, clearly. But that’s because whatever I saw I didn’t like.”

“More than just jealousy?”

“Yes, Mr. Chapman. Far more than that. Frank moved in on Deni like a vulture right after she and Lowell split. I mean, they had known each other before around the auction houses, but he pounced on her like a panther when her wounds were still quite raw.”

“But she loved him, too, didn’t she?”

“She certainly liked what he offered her as an immediate alternative when Lowell Caxton brought their marriage to a crashing halt. Wrenley was a vehicle to get back at her husband. First of all, he was young, and youth was something Lowell couldn’t buy for himself with all his millions. Wrenley was slick — too slick for my taste.”

“Was he a real player in the antiques business?”

Mattox was slow to answer. “He’s been making quite a name for himself. Not necessarily someone I’d bring in on a project, but he seems to know what he’s doing.”

“Would you say that you were closer to Deni in recent months than Wrenley was?” I asked.