You Have the Right to Remain Silent (15 page)

Holland tapped on the glass and she rolled down the window. “Just one thing,” he said. “You must have really gotten to him—otherwise he wouldn't have gone to such extremes.”

“Stand back,” she ordered. When he did, she started the car and drove away. The last thing she needed was commiseration from the man who'd witnessed her humiliation.

Marian had a hard time making it into work the next morning. She'd stayed up too late and she'd had a few drinks. Last night she'd just driven around for a while, yelling at other drivers now and then to let off steam. Then she'd spotted a parking place a few doors down from a bar and it seemed only natural to pull in. Marian wasn't a heavy drinker, and drinking alone had never been much fun. She wanted company, but it had to be someone who would listen indulgently and let her gripe until she got it out of her system. That let out the entire Ninth Precinct. Kelly Ingram? No: preview performance tonight. In the end Marian had called her old partner from better days and got him to come join her in the bar. On the whole Ivan Malecki had listened sympathetically, but then he took a stern-uncle line with her.

“You're better off without that Brian,” he'd said, pouring himself a beer.

“You're telling me something I already know,” she'd muttered.

“So why did you stay with him?”

“I must have had a reason. I just can't remember what it was.”

Ivan's comfortably familiar face had smiled sympathetically. “You should have walked away yourself, long ago. You musta seen signs he was the kinda man who could pull a stunt like that. Why didn't you walk away then?”

Marian didn't know.

When she finally dragged herself into the Precinct Detective Unit room the following morning, it was to find four men she didn't know taking up what little space the crowded office had. They were all reading from the reports on the East River Park murders.

“Who are you?” she demanded. “What's going on?”

“Major Crimes Unit,” one of them said without lifting his head.

Marian whirled and charged into Captain DiFalco's office. He lifted a hand to stop her before she could say anything. “No, they haven't taken over the case … yet. But you can be damned sure they're looking for gaps in the case we're building. Your police work had better be rock solid on this one, Larch.”

“It is, Captain. We didn't leave any holes.”

“Because if you did, because if they find
one little thing
we've forgotten, we can kiss that case goodbye. I've given you a lot of leeway, Larch, because I thought you'd function better without me breathing down your neck. But if you screw this up for me, I promise you, you're going to regret the day you ever set foot in the Ninth Precinct.”

I already do
, she thought. “We've covered everything,” she said firmly. “And what we couldn't get to, the FBI took care of. Major Crimes isn't going to find anything.” Marian wasn't at all sure that was true, but it was death to appear uncertain when reporting to a superior; she'd learned that lesson her first year on the force.

DiFalco dismissed her and she went back to her desk, one corner of which was being used by one of the Major Crimes men. Her head hurt. Foley was in one of his sullen moods and wasn't speaking; that suited Marian fine. The FBI was nowhere in sight. The memory of the ugly trick Brian had played on her the night before kept running through her head; with an effort she pushed the scene out of her mind, took a Nuprin, and pulled out the glossies taken at East River Park.

Conrad Webb. Sherman J. Bigelow. Herbert Vickers. Jason O'Neill. Webb was the heart and soul of the liaison group, and probably its mind as well. Two men would have been needed to take his place: Bigelow for his know-how and O'Neill for his “charm,” as Edgar Quinn put it. And the group was rounded out by overweight, disorganized Herb Vickers with his talent for explaining high-tech matters to laymen. If any one of them had been involved in selling secrets, surely the FBI would have found at least traces of the deal by now. Probably Quinn just wanted the killer to be someone outside Universal Laser. Or wanted the police to think so, if he himself was guilty.

How can you have four murders and NO suspects?
The only reason she had for even considering Edgar Quinn a possible suspect was something that Quinn himself had said, that one of the four victims might have been selling Universal Laser secrets. Sheer supposition on his part, if he was playing straight; an attempt to misdirect the investigation if he was not. That was all they had on him, that and an iffy alibi. But Elizabeth Tanner's alibi wasn't absolutely airtight; a further check had revealed a time early Saturday evening when she, her husband, and their Glen Cove host had not been together.

“Got something,” Foley said from the next desk. “Put it in writing,” he said to his phone and hung up. “Security at Universal Laser was one man short on Saturday. Regular man and two back-ups were sick, a fourth man couldn't be located. They like to keep two men on the monitors, so one's always watching while the other's doing rounds upstairs. But only one was manning the monitors Saturday.”

Marian grinned at him. “So that's how they got out of the building. It's also how someone else could get it.”

“Yeah, they just snuck by when the guard was taking a crap.”

“Elegant, Foley. But would there be enough time to get four
bodies
out? They must have still been alive when they left.” She noticed all four men from Major Crimes listening intently.

“Shit,” Foley said. “We still don't have the scene.”

Marian thought a minute. “Yeah, I hate to give up on Universal Laser. That guard still sick? Get somebody to pin him down as to exactly when he left his post and for how long. And we don't take ‘I can't remember' as an answer.”

Foley reached for his phone, and Marian sifted through the papers in her desk drawer until she found the card Trevor Page had left. Her call was transferred three times but she finally got him on the line.

“Sergeant Larch,” he said with a lift in his voice. “Anything new?”

“Maybe. I want to know if Holland's finished his check of Universal Laser's computers.”

“Yes, he wrapped it up yesterday.”

“And?”

“And nothing. All the erased files Holland recovered were records of ordinary business transactions that are no longer current. And the only hidden files were restricted ones accessible only to certain key personnel for security reasons, or else they were ordinary DOS system files. You were counting on something?”

“Did Holland read all the files?”

Page laughed, ruefully. “It would take a year to read the correspondence alone. Holland has access to the restricted files, of course, but they all have to do with the Defense Department project and we already know about that.”

“
You
already know about it.”

“Believe me, Sergeant, if there were anything to be found, Holland would have found it. But I'm glad you called. There's something here you might be interested in—I don't know whether it's related to the killings or not, but there's a chance. Can you come here?”

“I'm on my way.” She hung up and told Foley she was off to Federal Plaza. As she left she saw the Major Crimes men watching her and openly wondering if she was on to something. She exited with a flourish, doing nothing to spoil the impression.

13

The FBI offices at Federal Plaza had the impersonality all government offices have to some degree, slightly forbidding at first but then quickly forgettable. Trevor Page was waiting at the main doors and led Marian to an office that had no name or number on the door.

“Sorry I had to ask you to come here,” Page said, “but we uncovered some information I couldn't print out because it's in one of our classified files. You'll have to read it from the computer screen.”

That struck Marian as odd; she didn't have any sort of government security clearance. Page must be bending the rules for her benefit. “What kind of information?”

“Did you ever hear of a man named Evan Christopher?”

“No. Who's he?”

“An arms dealer. When we struck out on Universal Laser's people, we decided to run a check on their suppliers and customers. Christopher has dealt with Universal in the past, twice. But here's what turned up—Christopher was at Harvard the same time Jason O'Neill was enrolled there.”

Marian perked up. “A connection?”

“Not that we can prove. They may not even have known each other. We compared their class schedules and they took no courses together—which proves nothing one way or the other. But look at this.”

Marian read the computer screen; it was a list of names and affiliations Evan Christopher did business with or was suspected of doing business with. The names were foreign and unfamiliar to Marian, and she said so.

“Watch.” Page moved the cursor to one of the names and pressed the return key.

The screen changed to a personal data record, and suddenly it all made sense. “PLO,” Marian said with a sinking feeling.

“Exactly. The Palestine Liberation Organization gets most of its money from wire-transfer theft—intercepting the transfer of funds and diverting them to their own accounts. They steal American money and use it to buy American weapons, illegally, from venal dealers like Evan Christopher.”

“Why haven't you arrested him?”

“The agents assigned to his case went to his home in Baltimore Sunday to bring him in. They found him dead.”

Oh boy. “Murdered?”

“Evidently not. He just tripped and fell down a flight of stairs—and broke his neck. The Baltimore police are satisfied it was an accident. Christopher was alone in the house, for one thing. Our men on the scene accepted it as an accident.”

Marian thought a moment. “So this Evan Christopher was a sort of middleman … buying weapons legally here and selling them illegally to terrorist groups like the PLO? Did he ever sell anything other than weapons? Like information?”

Page sighed. “His file doesn't say so. But there are a lot of things about Evan Christopher that we don't know. Such as, how does a young, clean-cut MBA from Harvard get involved in the arms-dealing business in the first place? We have a lot of gaps to fill in.”

“And his only connection with the East River Park murders is that he attended the same school Jason O'Neill went to?”

“It may not be as thin as it sounds. We've cracked cases before by following up flimsier connections than that. But in situations like this the rule of thumb around here is ‘Follow the money.' Holland is working on that right now, starting with Christopher and trying to trace some financial trail to Jason O'Neill. If he can find a link, then your case is solved. But even if he can't find one, you still have to consider Evan Christopher a suspect.”

“A dead suspect.” Marian walked aimlessly about the office. “I'd give a ton of money to know what went wrong—assuming it was Christopher who did the killing, I mean. Did O'Neill get scared before the deal was consummated and threaten to blow the lid off the whole thing?”

Page nodded. “I'd say that was a good guess. Otherwise why would Christopher cut off his source of supply? O'Neill must have gotten cold feet.”

“Someone at Universal Laser may have found out.”

“Someone else on the liaison team? Possibly. That would account for the murderer's killing another member of the team in addition to O'Neill, but why the other two?”

“Maybe they all knew. Maybe the killer was just playing safe. Maybe a lot of things. Maybe I'm through investigating the East River Park murders?”

Page grinned at her. “Could be. Disappointed?”

Marian laughed. “Oh sure,
real
disappointed. Look, I'm going to have to tell all this to Captain DiFalco.”

“I know. Just ask him to keep it under his hat for the time being. No paperwork, Marian, since this is still classified material.”

“Okay. How long has Holland been trying to trace the money?”

“He just started. Unless he gets lucky immediately, we won't know anything for a while.”

Marian wondered how long
a while
was. “Is he working on it alone?”

“No, he has help. Perhaps you'd like to work with him, to keep track of his progress?”

“I'd rather kiss a Klingon.”

Page looked startled, and then laughed. “You're not too fond of Holland?”

“Let's just say he's not one of my favorite people. What I want to do now is go see Edgar Quinn.”

“Oh? Why?”

“To find out if he knew this Evan Christopher himself. Or whether the sale of Universal Laser weapons was arranged by someone else, and if so, who. I'd like to pin this down.”

Page nodded. “Good idea. I'll go with you. But let's call first.” He went to the desk and used the phone. After a minute he hung up. “Quinn's leaving for a business lunch in about twenty minutes—we won't have time.” He checked his watch. “Speaking of lunch, are you hungry? I promise I'll do better than a street vendor's hot dog this time. I've been trying to buy you a meal ever since we met.”

“You talked me into it,” Marian said. “Where are we going?”

They took a cab to Le Rivage on West Forty-sixth. The theater district had seen a blossoming of new restaurants in the past few years, but Page ignored them and chose a long-time favorite instead. Marian almost said no; she and Brian had shared a number of meals there when things were still good between them. But she couldn't spend the rest of her life avoiding places that reminded her of Brian, so she said Le Rivage would be just fine. Lunch was long and leisurely, and Marian was able to fight down any feelings of guilt that threatened to surface over taking so much time; after all, Captain DiFalco had ordered her to spend time with the FBI. The fact that this particular representative of the Bureau was attractive and good company to boot had nothing to do with it. Orders were orders.