Keeper (26 page)

“Not Romero,” I said.

“No, not Romero. Not if your theory is correct, anyway. He won’t claim her until she’s dead. It’s got to be the mother, then, right? The woman who had the abortion. He’s killed the mother for having the abortion, and he’s killed Katie because Romero performed the abortion, to let her know what it felt like.”

“So it’s a question of finding the man who impregnated a woman who went to the Women’s LifeCare Clinic in the last year or so and who had an abortion,” I said. “That can’t be too hard, right? Only one, maybe two thousand candidates?”

“No, we’re looking for a dead woman,” Bridgett said. “And these letters started only a couple of weeks ago, so it’s got to be a patient that died fairly recently.” She got up and went to the phone on the kitchen counter. “I’ll call Dr. Faisall, see if I can get access to the patient files.”

“It may not be worth it,” I said. “Common Ground is tomorrow, Bridgett.”

Without stopping her dialing, she said, “You’re being awfully defeatist.” Then she was talking to Dr. Faisall, explaining our theory and asking if she could please look at the patient records of the last few months. The inactive records, Bridgett specified, people who were no longer coming in for one reason or another.

I put my glasses back on and then my pager went off. I silenced it and held it up for Bridgett to see. She nodded, told Dr. Faisall she would be by the clinic in the morning, then hung up and stepped out of the way for me at the phone.

It was Fowler. There was significant background noise over the phone, multiple voices and what sounded like radios crackling.

“Atticus, is Romero secure?”

“Very,” I said.

“Barry lost his tail,” Fowler said. “He went to see Crowell, left there, and headed to Grand Central. Took the shuttle to Times Square. NYPD lost him near Port Authority. We think he’s left the city.”

“But you don’t know?”

“No, we don’t. A bench warrant’s been issued, and there’s an APB out on him. I interviewed Crowell after we heard Barry had bugged, and he was convincingly surprised. Crowell told me that he had fired Barry.”

“Hold on,” I said, and relayed the information to Bridgett.

“Ask Fowler if he knows about Barry’s personal life,” she said.

I ran that one at him and Scott said, “What? Why?”

“He ever been married? Have a girlfriend, siblings, anything?”

“No girlfriend,” Fowler said. “No known acquaintances except Crowell. He’s got two sisters in Tennessee. We think that may be where he’s headed. Look, I’ve got to go, coordinate this thing with NYPD. It’s a monkey-show over here.”

“Sounds like it was from the beginning. You never should have lost him.”

“Fuck you,” he said cheerfully, and banged the phone down.

Bridgett had gone down the hall, and now came back, fastening a shoulder holster into place, a Sig Sauer P220 now riding under her right arm. She reached for her jacket, saying, “Let’s go.”

“You think we’re going to find Barry?” I said.

Bridgett shook her head. “But I can think of a good place to start looking.”

She parked off Fulton, about a block from Romero’s apartment. The streetlights shone on all the people out for a Friday night walk to the South Street Seaport, holding hands or clustered in groups that we had to step around.

“I want to see the apartment,” Bridgett had said once we were in the Porsche.

“The police have—”

“I know,” she said. “But I haven’t.”

“We don’t know if Barry is the shooter,” I said.

“I doubt he is. But the shooter backed up the pipes, under our current theory. I want to see if he left anything behind.”

“Anything that the police and FBI might have missed, you mean,” I said.

“Do you have a better idea?” she shot back.

“We could go to Crowell’s and beat him within an inch of his life,” I said.

“No, we couldn’t. You’d end up in jail, and what would Romero do without you?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing. Here, have a mint, stud.”

I took the mint and crunched on it, and neither of us spoke for the rest of the drive.

——

Philippe was at the door and I remembered I owed him twenty bucks, so I gave him the money before we went past. Bridgett watched the exchange of currency without comment. We took the stairs to the second floor, passing a young man I didn’t recognize as we started down Romero’s hall. Bridgett stayed ahead of me and didn’t stop. When we’d instituted security for Romero, I had made a point of getting to know each face on the doctor’s floor.

This guy wasn’t one of them.

Could be anybody, I thought.

But I stopped and turned around and said, “Hey, excuse me?”

He had opened the door to the stairwell, and he turned his head. His hair was buzz-cut short, dirty blond, and his arms were thick and powerful. A pair of brown leather gloves were thrust into the back pocket of his jeans. His face was that of a boy. His eyes were hazel, and they met mine.

Gloves, I thought. In summer.

Then he ran.

“Bridgett!” I shouted and started after him, yanking the door to the stairwell back in time to see him exiting into the lobby. I swung over the railing, and felt my left ankle twist and then give as I came down on the last step. I sprawled forward through the door before it swung shut completely.

“Stop that man!” I shouted to Philippe.

He took a second to react, then pivoted, putting his body between the other man and the door, but the other man didn’t stop, just bent low and then blasted forward like a linebacker after a quarterback when the blitz is on. Philippe went through the glass door backward, hitting the cement sidewalk hard, the glass showering about them both. The other man regained his footing almost immediately and kept going.

Bridgett ran past me as I got up, and I was ten feet behind her when we hit the street. Philippe was coughing as I went past, struggling to his feet, and I assumed he was fine.

Bridgett had pulled up, looking frantically both ways, growling, “Where’s that pest-bastard?”

There was a ripple in the Friday-night crowd, heading south toward the Seaport. I started that way, Bridgett following me. I’m not much for running, only when chased, I suppose, but I am quick.

This guy was, too, and he had the lead on us.

We hit the open promenade of the Seaport in time to see him push through a crowd that had surrounded a fire-eater. My left ankle was killing me, protesting with sincere pain every time I came down on it. Bridgett cut left around the crowd, and I went right, and we met up again on the other side, each scanning. The crowd was bubbly, liquid, shifting easily now, and with a lot of noise, conversation, patter, laughter.

He was nowhere to be seen.

“Fuck!” Bridgett shouted. “Fuck fuck fuck!”

A young couple pulled their son away from us, and the crowd thinned near where we stood.

“Son of a bitch,” Bridgett said breathlessly. “Mother of . . . oh, I’m so mad I could just—what the fuck are you looking at?” The last was directed at a young woman wearing a Fordham T-shirt.

“Whoa,” the woman said, and backed away with her friends.

“Preppy bitch,” Bridgett said.

“I know who he is,” I said.

“What?”

“That guy, I know where I’ve seen him before. Outside the clinic, the day the bottle was thrown. He was with Barry, he was wearing a Columbia University sweatshirt.”

“You’re sure it’s the same guy?”

“It’s the same guy.”

“Good, okay, good, that means we can find his name,” she said. “That means we can find out who he is.”

“No.”

“What do you mean, no?”

“He wasn’t arrested.”

She squeezed her eyes closed, putting both her hands to her head and sliding them up into her dark hair. Her hair fell back and she exhaled sharply, then opened her eyes and said, “He was in her apartment, wasn’t he?” 

“Maybe,” I said. “Probably.”

' “We’ll get prints off her door. I’ve got a kit in the Porsche.”

I shook my head. “No, he had gloves. He must have worn them in the apartment.”

“The stairwell!” Bridgett said.

We gave the crowd one last look-over, but it was futile. Then we turned and started back up the street.

“Quit limping,” she told me.

“Fuck you,” I said sweetly.

Philippe was on the phone when we got back to the building. Bridgett continued on to her car for her print kit. I waited until he hung up. “Just ordered a new door,” he said. “Who the hell was that guy?”

“An athlete,” I said.

“No shit?” He brushed specks of glass from his uniform, muttering.

“You’re okay?”

“Didn’t get cut, if that’s what you mean. Don’t know how.”

“Lucky.”

“You get him?”

I shook my head.

He went to get a broom, saying, “Should I call the police?”

“We’ll handle it,” I told him.

Bridgett dusted the doors to the stairwell, both front and back, and then worked the railing. She pulled numerous useless prints, but got a portion of a palm off the inside of the first-floor door where we figured University had pushed it open.

“It’s a nice partial,” she said, blowing gently on the toner.

She prepared the cards and I used the doorman’s phone to call Fowler’s cellular. I told him what happened, that I recognized the man from outside the clinic, and that Bridgett had pulled a possible print. Fowler said he’d get there as soon as he could, and told us not to disturb anything more.

“Let us do our job,” he said. “You protect Romero: That’s what you do. I find clues and bad guys: That’s what I do. Got it?”

“We’ll be in the apartment,” I said.

“No, you won’t,” he said. “Don’t even go near it. You’ll destroy evidence.”

“We’ll wait in the lobby,” I said.

“That’s a good boy. Keep it up and you’ll get a puppy treat.”

I barked at him before he hung up.

Bridgett didn’t want to wait in the lobby. “I just want to look around,” she said.

“We wait.”

She grumbled and checked her pockets for more candy, coming up empty and heading to a deli next door to restock. The first patrol car pulled up as she returned, starting in on the first roll. The CSU arrived a few minutes later. Bridgett was starting on a new roll, Spear-O-Mint, when Fowler showed up and told us to wait in the lobby. We followed him up to Romero’s apartment.

It would have been funny, I think, if the situation was different. But walking into the apartment again, taking the flight of stairs onto the main floor, and seeing, again, the whole living room in forensic disarray, a pressure built behind my eyes. While Bridgett dogged Fowler through the apartment, I stood by the stairs, and watched the technicians work. This wasn’t the same as when Katie died, I knew that, but it was hard to get past it, and my dream from the night before came back sharply.

Cops and techs coming up the stairs kept brushing past me. The third time the same officer bumped me I snapped, “Watch what the hell you’re doing.”

The patrolman turned and said, “You got a problem?” 

“You can stop fucking pushing me every time you come up the stairs, that’s my problem.”

He shoved his face to mine, leaving half an inch of hostile air separating us. “You can wait outside, or you can shut up, but you’re at a crime scene and you’ve got no rights, asshole.”

I almost put my fist in his stomach, but Bridgett got to me first, saying, “Come here, would you?” and pulling me by the arm. The cop and I kept eye contact until Bridgett nudged me into the bedroom.

“What the fuck’s your problem?” she asked.

“No problem,” I said. “I just don’t like being pushed.” 

“You don’t like . . .” She shook her head. “Try the decaf, stud, calm down.”

“Don’t call me stud.”

“Sit down, stud,” Bridgett told me.

I glared at her and she pushed my chest with her index finger firmly. “Sit.” I took a seat on the bed, watching while the CSU analyzed the stained footprints on the carpet by the bathroom. One of the techs asked me to take off my sneakers so she could run a comparison, and I complied without comment. My ankle was starting to swell, and it hurt to remove my shoe.

“Five sets,” I heard her tell Fowler. “I can tell you that already. One of them’s his,” and she pointed the toe of my Reebok at me. “I assume we’ve got matches for the others at the lab. But we do have a fresh one.”

“You didn’t come in here before we arrived?” Fowler asked me.

“No.”

The CSU tech gave me my sneakers back, and after that, feeling claustrophobic, I limped back down to the lobby. I thought about calling the safe apartment to check on everything, decided against it. There was a bench out front of the building, so I sat on that and waited. The doorman was fussing at the workmen who were replacing the broken door.

Bridgett came out ten minutes later and said, “Mint?” I took one, looked at it, then threw it across the street. “That was a waste of a perfectly good mint,” she said. “You hungry?”

“I suppose,” I said.

“I know a great place. Come on.”

Bridgett parked against the curb on Third Avenue and we walked back to the Abbey Tavern. It was dim inside and fairly busy, the bar full. Bridgett turned a sharp right and was greeted by a gray-haired man wearing a subdued suit.

“Bridie, it’s been how long?”

She said, “Two months, I think, Chris.”

“And those holes, dear Lord, look! Your parents would scream if they saw what you’ve done to that beautiful face. And how many have you added since I saw you last?”

“Two more,” Bridgett said.

“You’re mad.”

It might have been me, but I could have sworn I heard an accent creeping into her speech.

Chris grabbed two menus and walked us to a booth. After we were seated he said, “I’ll send Shannon right over.” He gave me a smile, then left the table.

Bridgett shook hair out of her eyes. “You’re not Irish, are you?”

“Not unless it’s a well-kept family secret,” I said.

Our waitress Shannon was short and slender, and gave Bridgett a hug when she reached our table. I was introduced, and Shannon gave Bridgett an approving look, then told us the specials. I picked the lamb stew; Bridgett ordered a large salad. We both ordered pints of Guinness. “Come here a lot, do you?” I asked.