You Have the Right to Remain Silent Page 7

  Marian stared right back. “So glad you agree.”

  “Why else bother with the ‘signature’ if not to convey a message to someone else?”

  “Exactly. You don’t have to convince me.”

  “I’m delighted to hear it.”

  Page had watched the exchange with mild amusement. “So how did our judge and jury manage it?” he asked, bringing them back to the point. “Gather them together and kill them all at once? Kill them at different times and places?”

  “The autopsy report ought to tell us that,” Marian remarked. “We’d be better off—”

  “Larch—pick up.” Foley was on the phone, gesturing at her.

  Marian punched the number two button and lifted the receiver. She heard Gloria Sanchez’s tired voice on the other end. “Bingo,” she said without enthusiasm. “We been checking the cab companies and got something.” Sanchez sounded as if she was in her black street-smart mode today. “We found pickups near three of the victims’ addresses on Saturday,” Sanchez went on, “all of them after noon, around one o’clock, like that.”

  “Which three addresses?” Marian asked.

  “All but Jason O’Neill’s.”

  “Where’d they go?”

  “You ready for this? They went to Jason O’Neill’s place.”

  “Jesus,” Foley said. “They were holding a, meeting!”

  “Looks like,” Sanchez agreed. “Here’s the good part. None of ’em took a cab afterwards. At least, there’s no record at the cab companies of pick-ups near O’Neill’s address.”

  “Because there wasn’t any ‘afterwards’,” Foley growled. “That’s where they were killed—in O’Neill’s apartment.”

  “Whoa, wait a minute,” Marian said. “Our detectives have been in that apartment—when they got O’Neill’s address book? They’d have seen evidence—”

  “Not if the killer cleaned up, they wouldn’t,” Foley insisted. “We gotta get the Crime Scene Unit to check the place.”

  “What’s going on?” Page asked.

  “We’ll need a search warrant,” Marian said. “I’ll get on it.”

  “Can I go home now?” Sanchez asked wearily.

  Marian said everybody could go home. Foley was out of the room before she’d hung up the phone. Marian held up a finger to tell Page and Holland to wait and punched out Captain DiFalco’s number. She told DiFalco—and the two FBI men—what Gloria Sanchez had found at the cab companies. “We’ll need a warrant to search Jason O’Neill’s apartment.”

  “I’ll start making calls right now,” DiFalco said. “It’s too late for a warrant tonight, but with luck it’ll come through sometime tomorrow. What the hell were they all doing at Jason O’Neill’s apartment?”

  “He was the only one of the four who lived alone,” Marian pointed out. “Whatever they were meeting about, they wanted it kept secret. Conrad Webb and Herb Vickers both lied to their wives about where they were going. Sherman Bigelow probably did too.”

  DiFalco was silent a moment. Then he said, “I want you to get on to the Crime Scene Unit first thing tomorrow morning. Make damned sure they understand we’re looking not only for evidence that a murder—or four murders—took place in that apartment, but anything else they can find that might give us some hint as to what that meeting was about.”

  “I’ll see to it.”

  “Things are beginning to break, Larch. Stick with it.” He hung up.

  “Yes, sir,” Marian said to the dead phone. She grinned happily at the two FBI men, pleased with what had been accomplished during the first twenty-four hours of the investigation. “Did you get all that?”

  Page nodded. “The killer must have found out about the meeting … and decided he’d never have a better chance? All four of them there together.”

  Holland raised an eyebrow. “And four grown men just stood there obediently and let themselves be shot one by one? How very considerate of them.”

  “The killer would have had help. You yourself said it was a two-man job, possibly three.”

  Holland shook his head. “Too convenient. Our murderer just happens to find out about the meeting? And when he shows up uninvited with a sidekick hit man or two, the victims don’t suspect a thing and ask them in for beer and munchies?”

  “Don’t be so quick to dismiss it,” Page said sharply. “For all you know, that could have been exactly the way it happened. You don’t know, Holland.”

  Holland’s smile had a touch of menace in it. “Nor do you.”

  Marian started to say something but then clamped her mouth shut. Their problem, let them get themselves out of it. Page and Holland were glaring at each other, some long-simmering conflict between them bubbling to the surface. Marian could taste the tension in the air. The cause was more than Holland’s acerbic personality; these two obviously had a history.

  It was Page who put an end to it. “There’s no point in arguing about something we’ll know for certain in the next day or two. The autopsy report will tell us if they all died at the same time. I don’t see that there’s anything more we can do until then.” He looked a question at Marian.

  “No, we’re finished here,” she said. “For now, at any rate. Once we learn what the Crime Scene Unit finds in Jason O’Neill’s apartment, we’ll have a better idea of what to look for next. Are you coming in tomorrow?”

  “Probably,” Page said. He put a card on her desk. “If not, you can reach me there. I’d appreciate a call. And now, why don’t you come have dinner with me?”

  “Yes, we’d like you to come,” Holland added dryly—more to include himself than her, Marian thought.

  Page didn’t even blink. “Is there a place around here you like to go?”

  “Oh,” Marian said, “I thought I’d just go home—”

  “One hour. You can give us an hour, can’t you? I’d like to talk about something other than corpses and murder for a while. We should get better acquainted if we’re going to be working together.” He smiled—a big, open smile. “Besides, we’re on an expense account.”

  The smile was infectious; Marian smiled back. “Well, I’m not. One hour, you say? You’re on. And thank you.”

  She cleared her desk and left with the two FBI agents, well satisfied with the day’s work.

  8

  They went to an Oriental restaurant two blocks from the precinct stationhouse; Marian told the two men she’d never eaten there but had heard the food was good.

  “The word ‘Oriental’ has multitudinous meanings in the restaurant business,” Holland said. He peered in through the window. “It looks like the sort of place that would fix you a moo goo gai pan pizza if that’s what you wanted.”

  Page sighed. “I’m sure it’s just fine.” He opened the door.

  The restaurant’s only window was in the front, next to the door. The subdued lighting helped hide the smallness of the place, and a smiling waitress seated them at once. Marian ordered Mandarin, Page Cantonese, and Holland Szechuan—the latter making his selection by pointing a finger at the menu without looking at it. Très bored. Marian and Page chatted easily while waiting for their meal; Holland was brooding about something, wrapped in his own thoughts. He sat absolutely still, his head held high; Marian wondered if he was posing, showing his profile to the world. She rather enjoyed having dinner with two attractive men, even if one of them was a bit of a snot.

  When the food came, conversation stopped as they all three dug in. Marian had taken only three or four bites when a smiling elderly Chinese appeared at her side wanting to know if her dinner was all right. She told him everything was fine; still smiling, he left without asking the men whether they were equally well satisfied.

  “Like it or lump it,” Marian said with a smile.

  “I guess we’ll have to,” Page answered. “Fortunately, it is very good. Not at all greasy.”

  Holland abruptly put down his fork, stood up, and headed toward the men’s room.

  “What a moody man,” Marian said.
“Is something bothering him? Or is he always like that?”

  Page smiled wryly. “He’s always like that. Holland’s all right—you just have to get used to him. His problem is that he doesn’t want to work for the Bureau.”

  “Then why doesn’t he quit?”

  “He can’t.” Page turned the conversation in another direction, not wanting to talk about his partner behind his back. They kept to neutral topics, steering clear of both personal questions and the crime they were investigating. Page tended to be conservative in his politics, hardly surprising in an FBI agent; there were very few liberal cops. Page was a casebook hard-liner when it came to protecting the security of America; he was a little more casual about the use of force than Marian was. But by the end of the meal that was all she’d learned about him. When Holland returned to the table, he still kept his distance—as if refusing to waste his energy on inconsequential dinner talk. These two really played it close to the vest.

  “Well, that was good,” Marian said. “I’m glad you talked me into—ahhhhhh yeah!”

  “Ah yeah what?”

  “Ah yeah I just thought of something. About the case, the meeting the four victims held Saturday. Hell, why didn’t I think of that before? Jason O’Neill called his girlfriend at five minutes after three Saturday afternoon—the girlfriend here in New York, not the one in Washington. The meeting must have started at one-thirty or two—”

  “So it was over by three?” Page interrupted. “Mm. Then the others had probably left by then, is that what you’re saying? If that’s the case, your Crime Scene Unit isn’t going to find anything in O’Neill’s apartment.”

  Holland came back from wherever he’d been and focused on what they were saying.

  “So we still won’t know where the murders took place,” Marian concluded glumly. “Damn. But none of the other three took a cab when they left O’Neill’s place. And I can’t see Conrad Webb riding the subway.”

  “Could they have walked home?” Page asked. “Started walking, I mean. How far did they live from Jason O’Neill?”

  Marian closed her eyes and visualized the addresses in her mental file. “The only one who lived within reasonable walking distance was Herb Vickers, but he was so out of shape he’d never try it on foot. No, they all had to have some form of transportation—if they left O’Neill’s apartment alive.”

  Page grunted. “Maybe the killer showed up in his car and offered them a lift.”

  Holland held up a hand to get their attention. “There is one other possible interpretation. What was it O’Neill called his girlfriend about?”

  “He left a message saying he’d be late picking her up that evening,” Marian answered.

  “How late?”

  “Half an hour, I think. Why?”

  “He knew at three in the afternoon that he’d be late picking her up at … seven? Eight, nine? At least four hours ahead of time, he knew he was going to be thirty minutes late.”

  “What are you getting at?” Page asked.

  “I’m saying they may have planned something, the four of them. Something that couldn’t be done until several hours later, running close to the time O’Neill would normally have been picking up his girlfriend.”

  “They got together a second time on Saturday?” Marian thought that over. “Or just stayed together until it was time to do whatever it was. You know, that sounds pretty good.”

  Holland gave them a mocking smile. “Unless, of course, O’Neill made his phone call while the meeting was still going on. Perhaps he saw they wouldn’t be finishing until late and he made the call as a not-too-subtle hint that they were taking up too much of his time.”

  “He could have made the call during the meeting,” Marian said, ignoring the mockery and fixing on the content. “Depending on when the autopsy report says they died.”

  “So we’re right back where we started,” Page said. “Without the results of the autopsy and the Crime Scene Unit’s examination of O’Neill’s apartment, all we can do is guess.”

  But Marian wasn’t quite ready to give it up; she looked at Holland. “If they were planning something for later, what could it have been? Dinnertime, Saturday night. What could they do then, besides eat?”

  Holland frowned. “Something they couldn’t do when they met earlier? Universal Laser is closed on Saturdays, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. But the watchman could have let them in.”

  “Then he could have let them in earlier as well. Why wait?”

  Page cleared his throat. “At the risk of sounding like a broken record, may I again suggest we wait for the autopsy report? The right explanation may be something we’d never think of in a million years, no matter how elegant our theorizing gets. Let’s put it away until tomorrow.”

  Marian smiled. “That’s right—we weren’t supposed to talk about the case over dinner.”

  “I never agreed to that,” Holland said dryly.

  At that moment the ever-smiling waitress returned and did her best to persuade Marian to indulge in an after-dinner sweet. Lichee? Honey sesame banana? Ice cream? When Marian had said no for the tenth time, the waitress’s face fell and she sadly placed the bill on the table between the two men. “Pay please to cashier.” She left.

  Page laughed. “She didn’t even ask us.” He fished out a credit card and they got up from the table. The cashier turned out to be the same old man who’d showed such concern over Marian’s dinner. “Hold on a minute,” Page said, looking at the bill. “There’s a mistake here—you charged us for only two dinners.”

  “No mistake, no mistake, is right!” The old man all but snatched the bill and credit card out of Page’s hand. Page turned and signaled to the waitress, who hurried to join them; when he tried to point out they’d been undercharged, she too denied there was a mistake.

  It was Marian’s dinner that had been left off the bill. “They know I’m a cop,” she said with a sigh.

  “I thought you’d never been in here before,” Page remarked.

  “I haven’t. And don’t ask me how they know.” By then the charge slip was made out and was smilingly presented to Page for his signature. “Go ahead and sign it,” Marian said, taking a twenty out of her billfold. “I hope this covers it.” She placed the bill on the cash register and was immediately met by a stream of rapid-fire Chinese and much shaking of the head. The cashier thrust the twenty back at her while the waitress started plucking at her sleeve. “I wish to pay,” Marian said loudly and distinctly. She was answered with more Chinese, more head-shaking.

  “Amazing, how quickly they’ve forgotten their English,” Page said with a smile.

  Finally Marian made the two Chinese understand she could not accept a free meal from them; she did so by speaking in the voice she normally reserved for Stop or I’ll shoot. “Let’s get out of here,” she muttered to the men.

  Outside, Holland raised an eyebrow and said, “Well, well, well. An honest cop.”

  “Well, well, well,” she shot back, “a cynical fed. Now which is the rarer bird, do you suppose?”

  One corner of his mouth lifted. “Sor-ry,” he drawled, not looking or sounding the least bit sorry.

  Marian refused their offer to walk her to her car, thanked them for the dinner she’d paid for herself, and said good night.

  The following morning Marian found that her black eye had faded considerably; only a slight bruise remained. Just as well, she thought wryly; nobody had felt particularly sorry for her anyway. Except Kelly. Kelly had worried.

  When Marian arrived at the stationhouse, the desk sergeant gave her a phone message from Trevor Page. He would be in Washington today, the message said. Curt Holland had something to check out in New York, but if needed he could be reached through the phone number he (Page) had left with her last night. Marian was just as glad to have them out of her hair for the day, but that did make it a mite hard to follow Captain DiFalco’s order to stick to them like glue. She wondered what it was Holland was checking out; Page had
given no details. And that, Marian thought, was the FBI’s idea of cooperating and sharing information.

  Foley wasn’t in yet. Marian put in a call to the Crime Scene Unit, telling them a search warrant would be coming through for them to give a thorough going-over to Jason O’Neill’s apartment. They were to look not only for evidence of a crime but also for anything that might provide a clue as to why the four murder victims had found it necessary to meet together surreptitiously Saturday afternoon. Search for notes, Marian said, torn-up papers, anything that looked as if it wasn’t part of O’Neill’s regular possessions. And for god’s sake call the minute they had anything.

  Foley strolled in, eating a jelly doughnut. “Grab a pencil, Foley,” Marian said. “Things to be done today.”

  “I can remember,” he said, mouth full.

  “Write it down.”

  He glared at her and stuffed the rest of the doughnut in his mouth. He sat down at his desk and made a big show of picking up a pencil and pulling a note pad toward him. Satisfied? his body language asked.

  “First, get a copy of the watchman’s records at Universal Laser Technologies,” Marian said. “We want to know everyone who went in on Saturday, day and night both. Second, as soon as the banks open, get a balance statement for all four of the victims—look for unusually large deposits or withdrawals, that sort of thing. Third, put a one-man stake-out on Mrs. Sherman Bigelow’s apartment. She’s got to come home sometime.”

  “Maybe she does,” Foley mumbled.

  “Fourth, contact the limousine services and see if Conrad Webb, Sherman Bigelow, or Herb Vickers ordered a private car anytime after three Saturday afternoon. Fifth, find out where Jason O’Neill kept his car. Look for a garage attendant who might tell us if O’Neill took his car out during that period—after three, Saturday.”

  “Jesus, Larch, this’ll take forever!”

  “Then you’d better not waste any time. And there’s one more thing. We still haven’t pinned down whether any of the four victims had personal enemies. Real enemies, the kind that hate deeply enough to commit murder. We’ve got to go into that more thoroughly.”