The Finishing School (6 page)

“Sure,” she said, following him with her eyes as he pulled off his knit cap and shook the sweat out of his dark hair. She was a beat cop, thirtyish, alone out front here. She flipped open the barrier and motioned to him to come back.

“Aren’t you gonna ask to see my shield?” he asked.

“Nah, I believe you. You look like a cop. Besides, I seen you running out there sometimes. I can’t believe you go in this weather.”

“You should be more careful,” he said, flashing the shield anyway. Accept a favor and next thing they were offering to cook you dinner. It made him feel bad, saying no all the time, so he tried not to let it get to that point. Life was strange. All these women beating down his door, and he couldn’t feel a thing. Instead he gets hung up on a woman who made it clear she had no room for him in her heart. Nothing he could do about it either. She’d reached him somehow, that one, so much that he just couldn’t shake her.

He dialed his boss from the nearest desk.

“Yeah, Mike, what’s up?”

“Danny Boy. Listen, I got a request this morning for one of my best men to sign on for a real quick TOD. Naturally, I thought of you.”

You could always count on getting a stroke job with this guy. Dan missed his old boss, who’d retired last year. This one was a headquarters flack who talked out of both sides of his mouth. Still, Dan was curious.

“Tour a’ duty?” he said. “Overseas?” Things in this town had been so bleak for him lately that the idea of going far away, someplace dangerous, had an appeal.

“Nah, nothing like that. We’d detail you to the Elite Narcotics Task Force just for a few days. They got a pretty straightforward case they want worked real fast by somebody with a background in retail heroin. I remembered you did those Blades cases a few years back.”

There had to be a catch. It wasn’t like his boss to be generous.

“What’s in it for you, Mike?”

“Political shit. You know this motherfucker Vito Albano?”

“Sure. Heard of him anyway. He’s supposed to be pretty good.”

“Yeah, well, he’s up my ass. Turf-battle crap. I got a bunch of targets with clear terrorism links, and he’s claiming they’re straight drugs so we gotta keep our hands off.”

“Does Albano have dibs? Who dexed ’em first?”

“Well, okay,
he
did, but that was before we knew the background, see. Anyway, I’m engaging in a little bridge building, if you will. I’d really like your help, Dan.”

Mike walked on eggshells with him. He asked instead of ordered. Dan had the respect of the other guys on the squad. Mike didn’t, and they both knew that.

“What’s the case?” Dan asked, not committing yet.

“Two girls OD’d this morning. One of ’em’s the daughter of—”

“Yeah, that guy Seward. I heard it on the news. You want me to work an OD case, with the shit we’re juggling now? You got to be fucking kidding me. That’s just jerking off a rich guy, far as I’m concerned.”

“It’s only for a couple days. Develop a relationship with Albano, and it could really help us out in the long run. I’d owe you. They got a meeting set for nine over in the U.S. Attorney’s Office.”

Dan felt suddenly short of breath, with a strange prickling sensation on the back of his neck. He knew, he just knew.

“Who’s the AUSA?” he asked, his voice hoarse.

“Hold on, I got the roster right here. Uh, AUSA’s a female. Melanie Vargas is the name. Oh, and you got a Raymond Wong and a Bridget Mulqueen from ENTF. So whaddaya say?”

A minute went by, then another. Dan forgot that his boss was on the other end of the line, waiting for an answer. He couldn’t believe the coincidence: getting offered a case with Melanie, when she was on his mind from sunup to sundown and every minute in between. And the dreams. Those were the worst, because in his dreams he was with her again, and he was so fucking
happy
it was pathetic. Now all he had to do was say yes, and he’d see her.

He told himself he should leave things how they were. He’d ended it for a reason. He saw how it was gonna go, just like with his ex-wife, and he couldn’t handle another relationship where he cared more than the other person did. If he had any doubt, he only needed to remember what he saw that time he watched her house. Melanie’d been calling him, and he was wavering. She sounded sad, like she was really hurting over the way they’d left things. So he broke down. He went by, planning to ring the buzzer. Even had some flowers in the car. Then he saw ’em, coming back from the park. Her and the husband, Melanie pushing the stroller. Dan felt like he was gonna choke, the way they looked like a family. He read the guy in a second, from his walk, his clothes, the tilt of his head. An Ivy League smart-ass in a fancy suede jacket, thinking he ruled the world with his twenty-dollar words. And the worst part was, by the way she looked at the asshole, the way she laughed at what he said, Dan had to think there was something still going on between them. Not that he blamed her. Who the fuck was he to go after the likes of Melanie Vargas anyway? A woman like her, with those looks, those smarts, deserved better than a cop’s salary, better than some hack whose idea of the good life was a patch of lawn to mow, some pizza and a cold one in front of the TV on a Saturday night. Still, it killed him the way that asshole treated her. One thing Dan would say for himself, if she belonged to him, he’d be faithful till the day he died. He had no choice. He couldn’t look at another woman if he tried.

“Dan?” his boss said.

Hell, maybe he should just go for it. He’d been numb since the last time he saw her anyway. Felt nothing. Might as well be dead.

“Yeah. Nine o’clock, you said?” he asked.

“Yup. So you’ll do it?”

“I’ll be there,” Dan said, and hung up.

Moth to the flame. How fucking stupid could you be?

DAN HAD ACKNOWLEDGED MELANIE with a curt nod right when he first walked in, and now he wouldn’t meet her eyes. He sat at the far end of the table, with a few empty chairs between him and everybody else, flipping absentmindedly through one of the evidence binders Bridget had brought. Melanie made herself pretend he wasn’t there.

“Vito, were you aware these two made an arrest this morning?” Bernadette was saying.

“Yeah. Ray-Ray beeped me an hour ago.”

“Oh, so I’m the only idiot in the dark here? Thanks a lot. Good communicating, Melanie.”

“Take it easy, Bernadette,” Albano said. “Give the kids a break. This pinch looks real promising. Salvadoran kid. Grabbed ’im with twelve decks in his sock, right, Ray-Ray?”

“Yes, sir.”

Bernadette raised her eyebrows, seeming appeased. “Really? Well, that
is
good. It’s fabulous, in fact. We’ll have something to report at the press conference.”

“I don’t think you should announce this to the press yet,” Melanie said. She could imagine the headlines—the tabloids screaming that Carmen Reyes had scored heroin from her gangster boyfriend, given it to the other girls, watched them OD, and then fled. She kicked herself for not warning Carmen’s father of the possibility.

“Press relationships are my domain, Melanie, but I’ll hear you out. Why don’t you think it should be announced?” Bernadette asked.

Everyone turned to look at Melanie. She felt Dan’s eyes on her, but if she met his gaze, she wouldn’t be able to think straight.

“It’s premature, and it could burn the investigation,” she replied, looking only at Bernadette. “This Salvadoran kid, Juan Carlos Peralta, may have been dating the daughter of the superintendent in Seward’s building, whose name is Carmen Reyes. Carmen was a classmate of the two girls who died. She’s missing. We need to establish the link between the two of them and confirm that he gave Carmen the heroin.
Then
we’ll have a case.”

“But there’s a major countervailing consideration. With an arrest this quick, we look golden, don’t you see? Wait even one day and we lose that impact. Believe me, I understand how the media works.”

“Bern,” Melanie said, “there’s a strong possibility Carmen ran away last night. That she’s out there right now, cold and hungry, thinking about coming home. If she finds out her boyfriend is in custody, she may decide to keep running and not look back. Then we lose a critical link in the chain between Peralta and the dead girls.”

“We arrested him with twelve glassines. How is that not a case already?” Bernadette demanded.

“Right now all we can charge him with is those glassines, and they don’t even add up to federal weight. Plus, they aren’t the same stamp the girls ingested last night. Let’s do the legwork to tie him to the heroin that killed the girls. Then we can charge distribution resulting in death.
That
has teeth.”

“How long do you need to establish the connection?” Bernadette asked, crossing her arms and looking doubtful.

“Hard to say. If Peralta talks, or if we find Carmen this morning and she gives him up as the supplier, not long at all. If we have to pound the pavement, then a bit longer,” Melanie said. She paused for a moment, then added, “We should probably pound the pavement anyway.”

“No substitute for shoe leather,” Albano said, nodding.

“Whatever we come up with will be useful down the road if we take Peralta to trial,” Melanie noted.

“What steps are you thinking about, specifically?” Bernadette asked.

“We start with the victims,” Melanie said. “Whitney Seward and Brianna Meyers. We should subpoena their cell and landline telephone records right away. Who knows, maybe they called Peralta directly.”

“Okay, I see your point. But don’t lose the forest for the trees. Stay focused on charging the ODs, and don’t worry about pulling every last toll record. Oh, and I assume this is obvious, but skip the records on James Seward’s home phone. Too many political implications to that.”

“Bern, we need those!” Melanie protested.

“Nobody gets treated with kid gloves on my watch, Bernadette. Fair’s fair,” Albano said.

“You’re asking for trouble, Vito. Seward’s extremely well connected. I don’t need to get in hot water over pulling his tolls and finding some phone-sex line or something,” Bernadette said.

“Who gives a shit? Long as we don’t leak it, how’s he even gonna know?” Albano said.

“Of course he’ll know. Anybody in his position has spies. If I subpoenaed your phone, you think somebody wouldn’t snitch to you?”

“Okay, maybe, but
so
? It’s a normal investigative step to take. The dickwad gives you trouble, talk to me, and I’ll take it up with the commissioner,” Albano said.

“I can call the commissioner myself. That’s not the point. I want to keep you happy on this case, Vito, but I have to think of my other interests, too. Why stir up a hornets’ nest for nothing?”

“It’s not for nothing, Bern,” Melanie put in. “There’s something screwy about the timing of Seward finding out about the ODs and calling the police. I can’t put my finger on it, but it bothers me. I think we should take a closer look at him.”

“Please, spare me the far-fetched theories,” Bernadette said, rolling her eyes. “He’s the victim’s stepfather, and he should be treated with respect. Understood?”

“I follow the trail wherever it leads,” Albano insisted, puffing out his chest. “That’s the way I work. You and me need a private meeting to talk about rules of engagement here, Bernadette. Okay?”

Bernadette locked eyes with the lieutenant.
Albano’s a dead man
, Melanie thought, and waited for her boss to explode. But instead, after a long moment, Bernadette smiled girlishly.

“That’s probably a good idea, Vito. Maybe we can do it over lunch later.”

Albano flushed slightly. “Sure. Sounds good.”

“Um,” Melanie said after an awkward pause, “so I have the green light to pull Seward’s tolls?”

“All right,” Bernadette said. “But obviously grand-jury secrecy rules apply. No leaks.”

“Course not,” Albano agreed, still looking at Bernadette. “Code of silence. By the way, Melanie, we picked up the girls’ cell phones from the scene last night. You might be able to get the numbers right off ’em.” He nodded at Bridget Mulqueen, who sifted through the evidence binders and pulled out two heat-sealed envelopes, which she passed down the table to Melanie. The first contained a small silver Motorola flip phone, the second a shiny pink Nokia with a screen.

“The silver one was in Brianna Meyers’s backpack,” Albano said. “The pink one was on the bedside table, so we’re assuming it was Whitney’s.”

“The pink one is a camera phone, right?” Melanie asked, examining it.

“Yeah, that tiny hole there is the lens,” Albano said. “We haven’t checked the memory for stored photos yet, though. We wanted to ask you—”

“If you need a search warrant?” Melanie said, finishing his sentence for him. “It depends. If the phones are registered to the victims, no, because their privacy rights died with them. But these girls were minors, so the phones are probably registered to their parents. I’ll write up warrants this afternoon, just to be safe. While I’m at it, I’ll include their computers, too, so we can get their e-mails and the Web sites they visited.”

“All right,” Bernadette said. “Does anybody have anything else before we break?”

“One quick question,” Dan said, looking up from the binders. Melanie caught her breath. Those eyes. How was she going to get through this?

Dan pulled an eight-by-ten crime-scene glossy from its plastic sleeve and held it up for everyone to see. It showed Whitney Seward’s bedroom, looking toward the wall where her desk was, in the opposite direction from the bodies on the bed.

“What about it?” Albano said. “That’s just the Crime Scene guys documenting the room.”

“Just out of curiosity,” Dan asked, “anybody know who opened all the windows?”

ROUNDING THE CORNER after collecting a legal pad and her briefcase from her office, Melanie didn’t see Dan O’Reilly standing by himself at the elevator until it was too late. She stopped in her tracks, feeling unprepared for the encounter. But he turned and saw her, so she walked up to him as naturally as she could manage.

“Hey,” she said, forcing a bright smile, feeling like she’d been punched. Too many things came rushing back. The rough caress of his voice as he whispered in her ear, the taste of his mouth. She kicked herself for that time she’d made out with him in his car. If they’d never kissed, it wouldn’t hurt like this now.