The Man in 3B (34 page)

“And you don’t?” I studied him. It was pretty obvious something was bothering him. His whole demeanor was off.

“Nope. The pieces are all there, but it just doesn’t feel right.”

“Really? You don’t think Ben did it?” I was confused. My curiosity was definitely piqued.

He stared at me for a few seconds, no doubt contemplating how much information he should share with me. I guess he decided he could trust me, because he kept talking. “I never thought he did it. Still don’t, but that’s not my call.”

“Then why’d you arrest him?”

“That was my partner’s bright idea. Anderson had found out Ben Wilkins was some sort of accelerant specialist for the fire department, so she thought, why not see if this guy brought his work home with him? She went and talked the DA into issuing a search warrant.”

I was kind of amazed that he was going into so much detail. This
was not your average cop. It seemed like he was probably breaking every rule in the book talking to me this way, but I got the sense he was getting things off his chest. Like he was feeling bad about locking up what he thought was the wrong guy. He seemed to really care.

“You didn’t believe he was guilty, but you went along with it anyway?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Why not? Anderson is my partner. She’s backed me on a lot worse plays than this. I figured worst case scenario, we search the place and eliminate the father and son as suspects. Except Anderson was right. The father did bring his work home.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Preliminary tests showed an accelerant was used in the fire, and we found the same base components in his apartment. I still had some leads I wanted to follow a little further, but with the evidence we had and the history between Daryl and Ben, the DA put a stop to it and issued an arrest warrant right away.”

I was shocked. What reason would Ben have to keep accelerants in his apartment? I guess you never truly know your neighbors.

“I’m not a cop, but that sounds like a pretty strong case against Ben,” I said.

He laughed. “Not really. It’s all circumstantial until the final test results come back. DA will never admit it, but we didn’t have any probable cause for the search warrant. Truth is, any first-year law associate might have been able to get the search thrown out, which pretty much would have killed our case. Well, until he confessed. If he had lawyered up, he’d be in his apartment right now, but this idiot goes and confesses on tape.”

“No offense, Detective, but you sound like you’re taking this awfully personal.”

He sighed. “I am taking it personal. I didn’t become a cop to lock up the wrong person—not knowingly anyway, and my gut’s telling me this guy’s innocent.”

“You sound pretty sure of that.”

“Damn right, I’m sure of it. The confession was all wrong. I’ve
been interrogating people for over twenty years, and I’ve never seen anyone agree with us so much. Anderson might as well have written the confession herself and signed it.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Officially, I’m not going to do anything. Unofficially, I’m going to solve Daryl Graham’s murder and get Ben Wilkins out of jail.”

He sounded sure that he’d be able to do that. For Ben’s sake—and Benny’s—I sure hoped he could.

“Well, if I can be of any help, let me know.”

He chuckled, which I have to admit I found a little unsettling. “It’s funny you say that, Connie, because my next stop was to your apartment to ask you a few more questions.”

All of a sudden I had this feeling that sharing all that information with me had been some sort of trap, and I’d fallen right into it.

“Questions about what?” I asked, hoping my nerves weren’t too obvious. “I’ve told you everything I know.”

He screwed up his face in a frown. “Really? Then how come you neglected to tell me about how jealous your estranged husband was of Daryl?” I was stunned silent. “I think you’ve been holding out on me, Connie. And I can’t say I’m happy about it.”

“I wasn’t trying to hold out on you,” I muttered. “I just didn’t think it was important.”

“Is that so? Well, I was talking to Bertha Dunbar on the way in, and she seemed to remember him sneaking around the fire escape the night before Mr. Graham’s death. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

I hesitated, wondering how much he really knew. He couldn’t possibly know about Avery’s visit to my apartment, could he? I felt cornered, but I still didn’t want to have to tell him the whole story.

“Don’t even think about lying to me anymore, because if you do, you’re taking a trip down to the station in handcuffs for all your neighbors to see.”

I raised my hands in surrender. “Okay, okay, I’m sorry. I’m not gonna lie to you. Avery did come by my apartment that night… Well, technically he broke into my apartment.”

Thomas still had an impatient look on his face. Obviously, I wasn’t going to get away with telling him anything less than the whole story of Avery’s visit to my apartment.

“I swear. He was looking for the divorce money he’d given me so he could get out of the country. I don’t know if Bertha told you or not, but Avery is a wanted man.”

“Wanted for what?” He started to write in that damn notepad of his.

I searched through my bag for one of the cards the detective had given me the day they searched my home. I handed it to him. “Armed robbery, I think, but I’m not really sure. You might want to talk to Detective Ryan over at the Major Crimes Unit.”

He glanced down at the card, then stuck it in his pocket. “Did you give it to him, the money he was looking for?” he asked.

“Yeah. And that’s the last I saw of him. I swear.” I raised my hand. I knew I was taking a chance, but I chose not to tell him about Daryl being involved with the money because it would open up another can of worms.

“How much money are we talking about?”

“About twenty thousand.”

“Twenty thousand! Cash?” Thomas didn’t look happy when I nodded. “Damn, he’s probably long gone by now.” He scribbled something else on his pad, then asked, “He hasn’t tried to contact you, has he?”

Once again, I hesitated and he said, “Don’t play games with me, Connie. You won’t like how I play.”

“He texted me last week, but I didn’t text him back,” I said adamantly. “Here, look for yourself.” I took my phone out of my bag and showed him the text.

“Is there anything else you’re not telling me?” He stared at me, trying his best, I suspect, to read my body language.

“No,” I said. “I think I’ve told you just about everything you need to know.”

“Oooohhhh, shiiiiiiiiiit!” Slim let out a long moan, arching his back before collapsing on top of me.

I had to laugh. When he first climbed into the bed, he’d promised he was going to put it on me, but from the way he was struggling to catch his breath, it was fair to say that our roles had been reversed. I was definitely the one who put it on him. A huge grin covered my face. I loved it when I had that effect on him.

“You okay?” I kissed his perspiring neck, then nudged him off of me. He rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling like he’d just seen the heavens.

“Uh-huh, I’m great,” he heaved between breaths. “And you?”

“Wonderful. Only one thing could make it better.” I rose up onto my elbow and reached for the blue box on my nightstand. I sat up and quickly snorted two hits; then I leaned against the headboard with my eyes closed to enjoy the rush.

Okay, so maybe I closed my eyes so I wouldn’t have to see the dirty look that I knew Slim was giving me. He hated when I did coke after we made love. He said it “cheapened the experience.” When I was feeling particularly annoyed, I wanted to tell him that his performance was what cheapened the experience, but of course I never did. What I couldn’t seem to make him understand was that making love was always nice, but a couple of hits of coke made it so much better.

I dipped my fingernail into the box and took a few more hits. By the time I did one last hit and put the lid back on the box, Slim was snoring. The coke had me wide awake, so I considered waking him
up for round number two. He was usually pretty irritable when I woke him up out of a sound sleep, though, so I turned on the TV instead.

A few minutes later, my cell phone chirped, signaling that I had a text message. There was only one person who’d be bold enough to text me at this time of night—my father. I was so happy to see his name on the screen, because it had been a while since he’d contacted me, and I was starting to worry that I’d never hear from him again.

I looked down at Slim and was relieved to see that he was still asleep. He had warned me repeatedly not to talk or text my father until the heat died down, so he would have flipped out, maybe even taken away my phone to prevent me from responding. I couldn’t understand why he was so worried about it. What were they going to do, arrest me for texting? It wasn’t like I knew where my father was or anything.

hey baby girl,
my dad had texted.

hey daddy. did you get my text the other day?

I had texted him about Ben’s arrest. Seeing poor Benny’s face when they handcuffed his father made me think about how much I missed my own father. I couldn’t stand not talking to him, so I waited until Slim went out for a while and then I sent Daddy a message. He and Ben had been friends, so I thought he’d want to know about his arrest.

what’s this about ben being arrested for daryl’s murder?
Daddy asked.

he wasn’t just arrested. he confessed!

It took him a while to respond. He was probably just as shocked as everyone else in the building that Ben was capable of murder.

Sounds like ben and i have gotten ourselves into a lot of trouble recently. who would have thought?

I felt like crying. Given Slim’s choice of careers, I’d always kind of had it in the back of my mind that he could be arrested one day, but never in a million years would I have predicted it would be my father running from the law. And now it looked like Ben Wilkins was
a murderer. It felt like the whole world had been turned upside down, and it scared me.

I texted Daddy:
please be careful.

i am. have you put together that list?

He’d asked me to compile a list of countries without extradition laws to the United States. I had some names, but I was trying to make sure most of them were countries I could visit.

yes. it should be finished in the morning.

good. i need you to do me another favor.

anything. what is it?
I was hoping it might involve going to meet him somewhere. I really missed him.

i left some stuff in the trunk of the car. can you have slim get rid of it?

Sure. you want me to put it in grandma’s basement?

His reply came back lightning fast:
no. just have slim throw it away. it’s mostly trash.

That was a little puzzling. My dad was somewhere on the other side of the map, and he was concerned about the cleanliness of the trunk of his car. It wasn’t even his car anymore. He gave it to me. What did he care if it was dirty? I hoped it didn’t mean he was planning on taking the car back from us.

you sure it’s all garbage? i think i saw some boots in there the other day.

just clean it out. i’m not coming back unless i’m in a box.

Those last few words hit me kind of hard.

please don’t talk like that.

sorry. just make sure you clean out that car.

i hear you. is there anything in particular you want me to throw away?

NO, EVERYTHING! GET RID OF EVERYTHING!

Dang.
Was he yelling at me via text? Before I could ask him why he was so worked up about this, he sent another less angry text:
please do that for me. don’t question me. just do it.

ok. i’ll take care of it.

thanks. while you’re at it why don’t you have the whole car detailed.

ok.

After that, there was such a long pause that I thought maybe the conversation was done. But then my phone chirped again with a text that pissed me off.

how’s connie doing? have you been checking up on her for me?

“Goddammit,” I mumbled to myself. “Why does every conversation have to end up being about her?”

I shot him off an angry text that would hopefully put an end to his obsession with that bitch.

that woman doesn’t deserve your concern. she’s still mourning daryl. you need to forget about her.

Right after I hit send, I was startled by Slim’s voice. I must have woken him when I was talking to myself. “What the hell are you doing? I know you’re not texting your father.”

“Huh? Oh no, baby. I was just updating my Facebook status to ‘deeply in love.’ ”

I hadn’t been out on the stoop other than to enter or leave the building for a few days. Not too long ago, I was the queen bee out there, sharing in all the latest gossip and enjoying every minute of it, but now that Ben’s arrest was the topic, I didn’t have it in me to go out there. I was in too fucked up a place for all that. I still hadn’t wrapped my head around the fact that Ben had confessed to killing Daryl. Didn’t think I ever would. Sure, Ben wasn’t short in the ego department, in or out of the bedroom, but he was a good person, a good man. The Ben I knew was not a murderer. I believed that with all my heart.

There was something else I knew in my heart: I truly loved that man. I’d been trying to deny it for a long time. Tried to convince myself that what we had was nothing more than a convenient affair. It had taken me watching him get hauled away for me to admit to myself how I felt. But I loved him, and I needed to show him how much. That’s why I’d spent the better part of two hours on three separate buses traveling to see him.

“Have a seat anywhere you’d like,” the guard said.

Truthfully, there was no place where I’d “like” to sit. Rikers Island’s visitation room was the last place I wanted to be, but it was either go there or sit at home and go stir-crazy with unanswered questions and unvoiced feelings.