Victims (19 page)

“Listen, Mr. Stein.”

“No. You listen, Mr. Wasserman. You are very young and at the start of your career. Your action—your inaction—could close out your future.
It can be seen to.
You got that?”

Elliot roused himself, pulled himself up. “Well, look, I know about newsmen who didn’t stop filming when some nut set himself on fire. Hell, they weren’t firemen, they were cameramen and—”

“And they did their profession irrevocable harm. Elliot, listen to what I’m saying. Carefully. Yes, you might be able to get a couple of bucks from some network. And that’ll be the end of it. You will also be nationally known, coast to coast, not for shooting the film, but for failing to take any action when you had every opportunity and no excuse. You read me, kid?”

Elliot was twitching; his shoulders were jumping in some kind of isometric rhythm. He was making Mike Stein very nervous. His large blue eyes were swimming and he was having a little trouble breathing.

“Elliot. You did a good job. As far as you went. I’m telling you what I would tell my own kid. You will destroy your future if you try to peddle that tape. Hand it over to me. This is a police matter and I’ll keep you out of it entirely.”

“But... then it’s
evidence.
And it wouldn’t be legally binding without me—the person who filmed it.” Elliot had once been a law student.

“I wouldn’t worry about it, Elliot.” Mike softened, shifted gears. “Look, I’ll tell you what. Give me a day or two. I’ll have a little talk with one or two people I know, contacts at the networks. They are always interested in young, talented photojournalists. I’ll put in a word for you. They
do
take my word, in the business.”

Elliot swallowed once, twice, breathed carefully and deeply. “Listen, Mr. Stein. I can do something more for you. I mean, I’m in the neighborhood. I hear what people are talking about.
Everyone
is talking. And they’re starting to get, like, defensive, you know? They know this thing is going to break, sooner or later, and they are getting nervous. There’s been some talk of a meeting of the neighbors. You know, to talk about how to protect themselves. From—you.”

“And you are in their confidence?”

Elliot smiled. It was the mean smile of a bratty ten-year-old spy. “Everyone knows me, Mr. Stein. They talk, I listen.”

“What you want is to undertake a surreptitious assignment for me? No commitments of any kind, right? And we’ll see what works out. That the deal, Elliot?”

“Except, of course, you’ll talk to some people at one of the networks on my behalf. Right?”

“One other thing, Elliot.” Stein said it casually. As though it weren’t important. “If you can, shoot some stills for me, candids of your neighbors. We can definitely do business on that.”

Elliot Wasserman stood still. He had the first professional assignment in his life. Photographer for a Pulitzer Prize winner. God!

Elliot Wasserman was hardly out the door when the phone rang. It was Miranda.

“I’m at my office, Mr. Stein. Tomorrow morning my partner and I are flying down to Miami. A man named Paul Mera has confessed to killing Anna Grace.”

“Just like that? Just walked into the cops and confessed?”

“No. It’s a little more complicated. He was arrested as part of a large-scale round-up of cocaine smugglers. He might be trying to stall for time or just feel like traveling around a little, but who knows? So Detective Dunphy and I will leave for Miami tomorrow, eight-
A.M
. flight.”

“Miranda, do you have a VCR? A Beta or VHS?”

There was a moment of silence. Then, “No.”

It irritated him, the fact that she was always willing to wait him out. If he didn’t pursue the subject, it would be dropped.

“Okay. Are you heading for your apartment now?”

“Yes. I have to pack and—”

“I’ll be there in about an hour. I have a tape to show you. I’ll bring my video recorder.”

“All right.”

“Miranda, aren’t you curious? Don’t you want to know what this is all about?”

“Mr. Stein, I am tired. I have had a very long day. I have a long day planned for tomorrow. I think you know this, so if you feel it is important that I see your tape, then it must be important. Yes?”

“It is important. Very. Very important. And I’m going to make a gift to you.”

A silence, then, “All right. I will see you when you arrive.”

She hung up. Stein shook his head and felt: annoyed? amused? Annoyed. Very annoyed. He was about to hand this girl the murderer in action. He disconnected his video machine, wound up the cord. Damn. He’d never even asked Miranda if she owned a television set. He just assumed she did. Everyone did.

Of course, Miranda wasn’t everyone.

D
ETECTIVE DUNPHY WAS ACCUSTOMED
to using silence deliberately. Usually, it provoked whoever was with him to talk too much. To fill the silence. But Miranda Torres was comfortable in silence. It was one of the things that unnerved him when he first worked with her. To him, silence was a weapon, and it took him a while to realize that she was not engaging him in a contest of wills: it was her nature to sit and listen and to speak only when she had something to say.

He had been surprised at her phone call just after midnight.

“Mr. Mike Stein has just brought me a videotape of the murder on Barclay Street,” she said. “He will not tell me who shot it. He claims confidential privilege under the First Amendment and I think that is his right. It looks authentic.” And then, after a moment, “It would not be terribly hard to figure, from the angle of the video, where it was shot from. It would be a matter of questioning a few people; probably a little background would reveal a student or a person with an amateur’s interest in videotaping.”

“It looks good?”

“Oh. Yes. I would say authentic. Shall I bring it with me to Miami?”

Dunphy thought for a moment. Anyone else would be filling the time with suggestions, but Miranda waited.

“If I came by your apartment tomorrow morning, could I take a look at it?”

“Yes. Mr. Stein left his video machine here. What time tomorrow, Jim?”

Dunphy stopped by at 6
A.M.
He swallowed the orange juice she gave him, sipped the hot coffee and watched the tape twice.

“Jesus,” he said.

“Yes.”

“Christ.”

“Yes.”

“A murder on videotape. There are a coupla good shots of this guy-”

“Yes.”

“Tell you what, Miranda. You got a safe place to leave this tape? We don’t want to take it to Miami with us. Let’s leave it here, pick it up after we get a look at this guy Mera.”

“All right.”

They both recognized Paul Mera the moment they saw him.

They listened to his taped confession, read along with the typed transcription. Everything the man described they had seen happen. His statement could be played as narrative to the video of the murder of Anna Grace.

It took a few hours to go through the legalities. The criminal-justice system of Miami, Florida, was not thrilled at turning Paul Mera over to representatives of the New York City Police Department, but the suspect had waived extradition. He insisted to the Miami police that he had been in the wrong place at the wrong time and knew nothing at all, could tell nothing at all, about any cocaine operation. He had been visiting a friend when wham, bam,
polizia
all over the place.

“They scare me plenty, these drug people.” Mera said. “I don’t wanna be around with them, no way, because I don’t know nothing about drugs, I don’t use, I don’t deal. I don’t mix with these people, not with any drug people. I like to be alone with my own thoughts. With my own things.”

“Why did you kill Anna Grace?”

“My own reasons. Plenty of my own reasons.”

“Did you know her? Was she a friend of yours? A woman friend, a lover? Did she do anything to you, to make you angry?”

Mera, in the square interrogation room, glanced from Miranda to Jim Dunphy, shook his head, made a growling sound, whispered something in a hoarse, angry tone.

Miranda looked at the court-appointed lawyer, a young Hispanic legal aide.

“Mr. Alvarez, kindly tell your client to speak in English. If he is not comfortable in English, please request a court-appointed interpreter.”

“But, Detective Torres, you understand Spanish and if he is more comfortable...”

“My partner, Detective Dunphy, does not understand Spanish. Talk to your client. We’ll break for coffee. If you or Mr. Mera want anything, let me know.”

She glanced at Dunphy and he nodded slightly.

Mera called out, loudly, in English, “Hey, you see, man? You let her talk that way, and you sit there and you say nothing, huh? They cut your balls off and you sit there—and you want to know
why?
Why I kill this woman—Anna Grace, whatever the hell? Because she was a
woman,
man.
All of them
—
all the others, because they were women.”

Miranda and Dunphy froze; they stared at Mera.

“Mr. Mera, please. You are tired and overexcited.” Alvarez turned to the detectives. “He is tired and overexcited. He has been without proper rest, without proper food, he would like a warm shower, a change of clothes, he does not know what he is saying and...”

Miranda sat down. “What others? What other women did you kill because they were women?”

Mera lapsed into Spanish: a long, bitter, incoherent tirade against women. All women; all females. He described how he would fix them, what he would do to them, how he would deal with them. His attorney, looking suddenly older and smaller than he actually was, raised his hands, grabbed Mera’s sleeve, tried to stop him.

Mr. Alvarez spoke a combination of Spanish and English, ending up yelling at his client, “For the love of God, shut up.
Shut up!
Say no more.”

Dunphy pressed her shoulder, and Miranda left the room with her partner.

“What do you think?” she asked him.

“Who the hell knows? I tell ya, if we didn’t have that videotape, I’m not sure I’d believe this guy. He’s a little nuts about being picked up with cocaine dealers. He’s trying too hard to distance himself from drugs.”

“Maybe he’d rather take his chances in New York on murder charges. Of course, he doesn’t know we have the tape. He might think we’d take him for crazy, but take him to New York just to be sure.”

She was telling Dunphy the best way to handle it: let Mera think he was putting one over on them. Let him think he was playing for time, that
he
was using
them.

Dunphy didn’t realize how closely he was watching Miranda until she looked up, waiting.

“So?”

Dunphy shook his head. No. Nothing. Just thinking.

What he was thinking was that for the first time since they had started working together, he had just now realized how good Miranda Torres was.

P
AUL SEVERO MERA WAS
booked at the 112th Precinct in Forest Hills for the murder of Anna Grace. He was a thirty-two-year-old illegal immigrant from Colombia. He claimed to be a chef. He could not give a list of where he had worked either in New York City or in the other cities he claimed to have lived in: Miami, Chicago, Los Angeles and Atlantic City. Wherever he went, he could and did get a short-term job. Yes, always as a chef.

There was a feeling of highly energized activity at the 112th. The arrival of a self-confessed murderer was not usual. In fact, it had never before happened at the 112th. It seemed to the desk officer that every ten or fifteen minutes another heavy gun showed up: representatives from the Queens District Attorney’s Office; homicide detectives; a representative from the office of the Chief of Detectives.

Stein left the press conference on the main floor before any of his media colleagues could corner him. He waved to the lieutenant at the desk and went directly upstairs to the second floor. The squad room door was open and there was a great deal of activity. Miranda Torres was talking on the telephone. She nodded at Mike and continued taking notes.

Mike stared into the interrogation room through the two-way mirror. The suspect had his back to Mike, but there was a certain set to his shoulders, a familiar waving of his hands. Mera stood up suddenly, agitated, walked briskly around the room. It was, definitely, the same man Mike had watched on videotape. This was the murderer of Anna Grace.

Two uniformed policemen, young, smooth-cheeked, excited at being a part of something real, something big, practically burst into the room. One of them, carrying a package, went directly to Miranda and started to unpack the knife he had just found in a search of Mera’s apartment.

“Don’t take it out, Officer,” Miranda told him. “Give it to me, please. Were you careful how you handled this? This is very important evidence, you did realize, yes?”

The police officer nodded, he had touched it, just like she said to do, with plastic gloves; he had inserted the knife into the heavy plastic wrapping.

“Hey, that the guy that did the deed, huh?” The blond cop asked. He was so tall that he had to bend a little for a good view into the interrogation room.

“The little guy, right? The guy with the mustache, right?”

Gently, Miranda pulled at his sleeve. “No. That is a representative from the Queens D.A. The murderer is the one sitting at the table, eating.”

“Eating?
Boy. How about that.
Eating.
The guy slashed a young girl to death and there he is—
eating.
Just like anyone else.”

He was overwhelmed at the reality. He had seen plenty of murderers in his lifetime, at least one in each cop-show episode on TV, but this was real. The guy in there was the real thing.

“Yes, he eats like anyone else, Officer,” Miranda said softly. “So, okay, you did a good job, you and your partner. What I would like you to do is to write a report about your search and what you found, okay?”

The second uniform was a little older, a lot tougher. He slipped his hands into his trouser pockets, took a quick look at the suspect, then turned to Miranda. His chin went up and he looked wise. He knew the score.