Hold Still (7 page)

TWELVE

October 6th

Back at the Division, Jocelyn
and Kevin put the two men in separate interrogation rooms and headed upstairs to their desks. Jocelyn tried Vaughn on his cell phone again, but he didn’t answer. As they started up the steps to the Detective Division, Jocelyn was struck by how preternaturally quiet the stairwell was—normally, the voices of detectives at their desks or on the phone could be heard trailing down the steps. A small sapling of dread sprouted in Jocelyn’s stomach. What if the Division had been inundated with calls after she and Kevin left? What if there hadn’t been enough detectives to respond to calls? Ahearn would have their asses if he knew they’d been out working an SVU case.

As if reading her mind, Kevin grumbled, “I sure hope they all fell asleep at their desks.”

At the top of the steps, the tension mounting in Jocelyn’s shoulders dissolved. Almost the entire shift was gathered around the tiny block of a television mounted on the wall in the corner of the room. It was hardly ever turned on, but tonight all eyes were riveted to the images moving across the screen.

Kevin and Jocelyn exchanged a curious glance, one tinged with relief. They sidled up to the rear of the pack. Jocelyn found herself next to Chen and nudged his ribs with her elbow. “What’s going on?”

“Is that Kensington?” Kevin asked loudly.

The television showed an aerial shot of a few tightly packed city blocks, some of the residential streets no wider than an alleyway, lined with squat, flat-roofed houses. The words “Breaking News” scrolled across the bottom of the screen. Marked units flooded the narrow streets, lights blazing. From the sky, the images reminded Jocelyn of the old video game Pac-Man, the marked units moving steadily through the grid of city streets, searching for their prey.

“They found the Kaufman girl,” Chen said, his tone disinterested.

Jocelyn felt her stomach constrict. For a split second, her breath caught in her throat. She coughed and tried to make her voice sound as normal as possible, but when she said, “Alive?” her voice cracked.

Chen didn’t notice. “Yeah,” he said. He rubbed a palm over his eyes, as if trying to wipe away some troublesome emotion. “Bound, beaten, and raped, but alive.”

Jocelyn stifled the breathless “Thank God” that nearly escaped her mouth. Although Northwest didn’t cover sex crimes, during her career Jocelyn had seen her share of crimes against children. Before Olivia, she’d been able to wall up the part of her that reacted emotionally—with hysterical rage at the criminals and aching sympathy for the victims—and do her job with the cool efficiency of a machine. But being a mother had put cracks in the wall, and, sometimes, her true feelings seeped through. It didn’t prevent her from doing her job and doing it well; it just made it harder for her to sleep at night.

“They found her in this guy’s basement. He escaped out the back, took off in a white Honda sedan. The Kenzos heard the police were pursuing a guy in a white sedan, and they pulled some dude out of his white car at Lehigh and Memphis and proceeded to beat the shit out of him,” Chen related.

Kenzos was the nickname for people who lived in Philadelphia’s Kensington neighborhood. One of the other detectives picked up the tale. “Yeah, so they realized they got the wrong guy, but in the meantime, the rapist crashes his car into a house on Cedar and takes off on foot.”

“I hope the Kenzos find him first,” someone else said, eliciting laughter from the rest of the unit.

“Nah,” Kevin said. “I hope he pulls a weapon.”

His comment was met with grim but approving nods. Jocelyn swallowed over the lump in her throat. She hated to admit it, but she agreed—everyone concerned would be better off if officers were forced to shoot and kill the child rapist while trying to apprehend him.

She glanced at her silent cell phone. “Guess I know where Vaughn is.”

Kevin nodded. “SVU is ass-deep in this right now. What should we do with their suspects?”

“Hold ’em till SVU comes,” one of the other detectives piped in.

Jocelyn kept her eyes on Kevin. She stared hard at him until he rolled his eyes. With a groan, he threw his arms in the air. “Fine,” he huffed. “Let’s go talk to them.”

They tore themselves away from the television and sat side by side at Jocelyn’s desk. She ran a quick background check on Angel Donovan. He was twenty-eight, a native of Philadelphia with a dozen arrests for drug violations. He had done a few years in his late teens. The rest of the charges had been dismissed before Donovan even got to trial.

“He’s been clean for the last five years, unless you count the reckless driving ticket he got last year,” Kevin said as he squinted at the computer screen.

Jocelyn leaned in toward the screen and scanned the report. “Five years, huh? Got shot in the throat five years ago. Suddenly stopped being a criminal? Unlikely.”

Kevin shrugged. “Well, we know he hasn’t ceased all criminal activity. He just hasn’t been caught.”

Jocelyn chewed her bottom lip briefly. “Five years ago, Warner had his first ever violent offense. I’m thinking we need to find out what went down five years ago and find out if Donovan was involved.”

Jocelyn tried to pull up the file in the police computer, but there was nothing there. “That’s weird,” she said. “There’s nothing here. A mug shot, the summary of charges, and that’s it.”

“No affidavit of probable cause? No reports?” Kevin wheeled his chair closer to hers and nudged her aside. His fingers worked quickly over the keyboard. He tried for ten minutes before a stream of expletives erupted from his mouth. “This makes no sense,” he said. “This kind of shit doesn’t just disappear.”

Jocelyn leaned over and grabbed the phone. “The DA’s office will have it. They’ve got everything.”

Kevin’s brow furrowed. “You calling Phil?”

“Not Phil. His paralegal, Lori. I always liked her better than him anyway. She still sends Olivia birthday and Christmas presents.”

Lori couldn’t find the file in the DA’s computer system, but she promised to look in their boxed files to see if she could locate anything—although it would likely take a couple of weeks to track down.

“Something’s not right,” Kevin said when Jocelyn relayed the conversation. He popped another tab of Nicorette gum. “Well, I guess we might as well talk to these guys. We’re gonna be here all night as it is.”

Jocelyn grinned and headed toward the steps. “Good luck talking, Kev. You can question Donovan. I’m taking Warner.”

She waited for him to remember that Donovan couldn’t talk. She watched his blank expression turn to consternation. Then she took off down the steps, dodging the pen he threw at her. “You’ll need that pen for Donovan,” she called over her shoulder.

THIRTEEN

October 6th

In the interrogation room, Larry
slumped in his chair, legs
stretched out before him, his right foot moving ever so slightly back and forth. His arms were crossed in front of him. When Jocelyn entered, he remained still. Only his eyes flicked toward her, following her around the room. She pulled a chair toward him, its legs screeching over the tile floor. Sitting beside him, she turned her body to face his and rested one arm on the table.

He spoke little during her introduction and muttered a “yes” indicating he understood his rights once she had Mirandized him. “So,” she began. “How long have you lived on North Sixteenth Street?”

His eyes lost some of their jitteriness. “About ten years. It’s my mom’s house.”

“What’s your mom do?”

“She used to work for a doctor, medical assistant or something. She’s sick now.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. Is it treatable?”

He shook his head. “Nah, not really. She has a little bit of dementia. But the real problem is her lungs and heart. She needs oxygen. Doctors said she has CHF. Something heart failure.”

“Congestive heart failure?”

Larry nodded. “Yeah, that’s it.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, Larry. It can’t be easy.”

He shrugged.

“Larry, do you know why you’re here?”

He swiped at the top of his nose with one hand. His eyes darted away from her. “Don’t know,” he said. “Guess it’s about a woman.”

“Yes, an escort. Her name is Anita Grant. But you knew that, didn’t you?”

No response. The twitching movement of his right foot grew quicker.

“Is this the first time you’ve picked up an escort online?” Jocelyn asked.

Larry sat up slightly. The fingers of his right hand moved to the tattered collar of his T-shirt. “Online?”

“Yeah, over the Internet. Is this the first time you’ve used the Internet to find an escort?”

Larry licked his lips. His answer came slowly. “I don’t go online a lot.”

“Larry,” Jocelyn said, leaning toward him. “We know you arranged to meet Anita Grant via e-mail. I’ve got copies of the e-mails. I know it was your computer because we’ve got your IP address.”

Confusion crossed his face. “IP address?” he repeated.

This, of course, was a lie. Jocelyn hadn’t gotten that far, but she was pretty sure that within a few days she—or someone in SVU—would have possession of his personal computer, and someone in computer crimes would be able to confirm that Larry Warner had sent the e-mail to Anita asking to meet with her.

“I have footage of you and Angel Donovan meeting with Anita Grant at the Dunkin’ Donuts on Germantown Avenue at five
forty-five, two nights ago. So you tell me—was this the first time you’ve looked for an escort online?”

“I wasn’t looking for no escort,” Larry began, but Jocelyn held up a hand to silence him.

“Larry, I’ve got an e-mail from you to Anita setting up the meet. I’ve got you on video in the Dunkin’ Donuts. I know you answered Anita’s ad and met with her to arrange a sexual encounter. Anita has been a prostitute for ten years.”

Larry remained silent, looking anywhere but at Jocelyn. She let a moment pass. The only sound in the room was the frenzied tapping of his right foot on the linoleum. He licked his lips and looked toward the door.

Jocelyn tried another tack. “Did you know they call prostitution the oldest profession in the world? Hell, it’s legal in Nevada. You—you’re not that old, still got your looks. Got your mother to take care of. Everyone needs a little release. It’s not a big deal, Larry. Maybe you went online, looked around. Maybe you wanted to find an arrangement that wouldn’t get you into a big emotional mess.”

He was nodding almost imperceptibly as she spoke.

“So,” Jocelyn went on. “Was this the first time you used online services to find an escort?”

Larry sighed, tugged at his collar again. “Yes.”

“Whose idea was it to find an escort?”

“What?”

“Was it your idea to hire an escort?”

He squeezed the bridge of his nose and squinted his eyes as if the light in the room had suddenly become too bright. “Uh, yeah.”

Jocelyn knew he was lying but left it alone for the moment. “So you met with Anita. What did you discuss?”

“Discuss?”

“Yes, what did you talk about?”

“Uh, you know. Sex.”

“What did you ask her to do?”

“She was—she would do it with me and Angel.”

“She would have sexual intercourse with you and Mr. Donovan?”

He nodded.

“How much did she quote you?”

“Uh, fifteen hundred.”

“Did you agree to pay the fifteen hundred?”

“Did we what?”

Jocelyn knew that lying suspects had a tendency to repeat the questions asked them to buy time, just as Larry had been doing since she walked in, but still, her patience was wearing thin. She didn’t show it to him. With all the calm she could muster, she repeated the question.

“I don’t remember,” he said.

“Well, Ms. Grant says you didn’t come to an agreement. She says you offered her only partial payment, and she left the Dunkin’ Donuts. I’ve got an independent witness who says they saw Angel Donovan force Miss Grant into a gray Bonneville just fifteen minutes later.”

Larry erupted into a coughing fit, his body folding in on itself.

“Let me get you some water,” Jocelyn said.

She stepped out of the room and walked down the hall to the room where Kevin was interrogating Angel. She gave the door two knocks and walked back to the end of the hall, toward the watercooler. Five minutes later, Kevin emerged with several sheets of paper clutched in his hand.

“What do you have?” Jocelyn asked.

Kevin shook his head. “This not-talking business is a pain in the ass. And, oh yeah, this guy can’t spell for shit.”

He held up a sheet of paper. The letters looked like those of a first grader.
Dont no.

Jocelyn raised an eyebrow. “What’s he say about the other guy?”

“He says there wasn’t another guy. Just him and Warner. He copped to just about everything else, though. He’s not the brightest bulb on the tree.”

“Three squares a day in prison. Can’t see a guy that size being someone’s bitch.”

Kevin laughed drily. “You never know,” he said. “He says Larry asked him to go get a girl. They went to the Dunkin’ Donuts, met Anita. She wouldn’t take the money they offered and left. They followed her, put her in the car. He claims he doesn’t know the house they took her to—he was never there before.”

“That’s bullshit,” Jocelyn said. “What’s he say about crucifying her?”

Kevin shrugged. “Wasn’t them. He says he and Warner took her to a house and had intercourse with her. He claims they dropped Anita back off at the Dunkin’ Donuts, and he has no idea how she got crucified. That’s it.”

“So they’re both denying the existence of the white guy. Did you ask him who Face is?”

Kevin nodded and held up a piece of paper in each hand. Makeshift letters spelled out
no gy at hose
on one sheet and on the other
dont no fase
. “He says he’s never heard of anyone named Face before.”

“Bullshit again.” Jocelyn paced in the tiny hallway. “Jesus Christ. This sounds rehearsed to me.”

“We’re not getting lucky on this one. This guy will cop to forcing Anita into the car and even the rape—I asked him if Anita put up a fight and he said yes—but he won’t give up the white guy. I don’t get it.”

“Whatever this guy has over them, it’s big,” Jocelyn said. “Let’s see if we can crack them.”

“All right,” Kevin said.

“Hold on.” Jocelyn took the stack of pages from Kevin’s hands. She fished out a handful of them. A few that said simply
yes
, one that said
Put her in car
, and the one that said
no gy at hose
. She tore the
no
from the last page so that it just said
gy at hose
. She took the pages and a cup of water back to the interrogation room where Larry waited.

She put the pages on the table and set the water in front of him. He was hunched over the table. The tap-tap-tap of his right heel bobbing up and down filled up the room. He took a sip of the water, his eyes never leaving her.

Jocelyn sighed and took the seat next to him again. “Larry,” she said. “Let’s cut to the chase. I don’t want to waste any more of your time. You’re not an idiot.” She flicked a finger off the stack of pages she’d brought in. “Clearly, you’re the brains in this operation.”

Larry’s eyes rested on Angel’s crudely drawn letters.

“We know you and Angel Donovan forced Anita Grant into your car. We know the two of you took her to a secondary location where one of your associates was waiting. Where did you take her?”

Larry stared at her silently. She could see him trying to work it out in his mind—how much to tell her, how much to leave out, what would make sense, and what wouldn’t. He cleared his throat. “We didn’t take her nowhere.”

“But Angel put her in your car, correct?”

He tugged at his collar again. “Yeah. She was in the car, but we didn’t go nowhere. We paid her. We paid for the sex.”

Jocelyn sighed again. “Okay, Larry. Who paid? You? Angel Donovan? Or was it your associate?”

Larry’s eyes darted from side to side. “My associate?”

“Yes, Larry. There was a third man involved. Who is he?”

Again, Larry licked his lips, his mouth making a smacking sound. “Wasn’t nobody else.”

“In the car, yes. When you got to the house, there was someone waiting. Who is he? I want a name, Larry.”

Larry shook his head slowly, scratching his nose. “There wasn’t nobody—”

Jocelyn held up her hand again, silencing him. “Larry, Miss Grant says there was a third man, and Angel Donovan has confirmed that. We know there was someone else with you that night. What’s his name?”

She rifled through the pages from Angel’s interview until she found the one that said
gy at hose
and pushed it across the table until it was under Larry’s nose. “What happened, Larry?” Jocelyn asked. “I’ve heard from Anita Grant, and I’ve heard from Angel Donovan. Now I want to hear from you. This is your chance to tell me what happened in that house. If you talk to me now, I can help you. I don’t think this was your idea, but I need to hear from you. Who’s Face?”

Larry’s eyes flitted from the page to her eyes. For a split second, he had the look of a deer in headlights. Recovering quickly, he cleared his throat and said, “Who?”

“Face. Who is he?”

“Don’t know no Face.”

“You don’t know anyone named Face?”

“No.”

Jocelyn leaned in toward him and lowered her voice. “Well, Angel Donovan does. Anita Grant most certainly does. Why are you lying for this guy, Larry? Tell me and I can help you.”

He was silent. Jocelyn waited a beat before moving on. “Where did you take Anita Grant?”

Larry shrugged. “Don’t remember.”

“Is it in Kensington?”

“Don’t know.”

“You drove there, Larry. You must have some idea.”

Again, he scratched his nose. “Don’t remember.”

“All right. Forget about the house. Between Anita Grant, the independent witness, and Angel Donovan, we’ve got you on kidnapping and rape. That’s ten to twenty on each charge. You could be in prison till you’re ninety. Think about that. You can go down or you can give me the name of the third man, and I’ll see if I can get the charges reduced. I’m sure the DA will help you out if you’re willing to do the right thing.”

She saw the struggle in his eyes. The moment stretched out between them. “What’s he got on you, Larry? Whatever it is, we can work something out. He drove the nails in, not you. Why go down for something he did? Give me a name, and I can work out a deal for you. I can help you.”

His gaze danced around the room, catching her eyes fleetingly. His Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat. The sound of his frame shifting against the chair seemed unusually loud.

“You’re not stupid, Larry. Don’t let this guy ruin your life. You have a sick mother to think about. Who’s gonna take care of her if you get locked up?”

He lowered his head into his hands. His shoulders rounded. For a moment, Jocelyn thought he might capitulate.

“Who is he, Larry? Tell me his name.”

He raised his head to look at her. His eyes had gone flat and vacant.

“I can’t,” he said.