CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

“This’d be some place to watch a ball game,” Benny said. He, Nora, and Jessica were seated before a wall of TV screens at the FBI’s New York Field Office, just across Foley Square from the Thurgood Marshall courthouse. The Staff Operations Specialist finished typing on the podium keyboard and looked up. “Okay, here we go,” he said. “This is Google data from Saturday, September 14, the day before the Dominic D’Amico killing.”

They sat mesmerized as the dot representing Mildred Jamison—Gina Cufaro—moved smoothly from LaGuardia airport to locations in Brooklyn before stopping for the night at an apartment building in the borough’s Bay Ridge neighborhood. Sunday morning, the dot went to the Caffè Giardino on Eighteenth Avenue in Brooklyn. About an hour later, the dot returned to the airport.

“Kinda chilling, actually,” Benny said. “So she whacked him at Giardino. Makes sense. Couple goombahs musta been given the job of dumping the body, and probably the gun too. And she’s gone.”

“She go anywhere near Conor McCarthy, that we can tell?” Nora asked.

“No,” Jessica answered. “Not that we know yet. But that changes when you go back in time to the Governor Burke hit. Watch.”

The specialist leaned toward the keyboard again and soon they were watching Google’s version of Gina’s early spring visit. As before, the dot moved from the airport—Newark this time—to various spots in Brooklyn, before stopping for the night in Manhattan, at the Lucerne Hotel at Seventy-Ninth Street and Amsterdam Avenue.

“Shit, she could almost see Burke’s apartment from the Lucerne,” Benny said. “Three blocks, tops.”

“Yup,” Jessica answered, “and she had company that night. We can’t show both dots on this graphic right now, but Conor goes to the Lucerne and stays the night. Next day, he leaves for his own place, and then this happens with Gina’s phone, a little before eight that next night.” She gestured to the specialist, who continued the movie. The dot left the Lucerne, moving down Amsterdam to Seventy-Seventh and then east two blocks to Central Park West, where it turned north, going past the museum to Burke’s building at Eighty-First. A short time later, the dot retraced the route, going down Central Park West past the museum, then right on Seventy-Seventh to Amsterdam and back up to the hotel. The next morning, the dot returned to Florida.

The room was silent when the movie finished. After several beats, Nora broke the quiet with a loud exhale. “Wow,” she said, turning to Benny. “Now you go to bat with Conor. We need to talk to that weasel.”

“Maybe just a little longer,” Jessica said. “We want to see if we can bring this movie to life. NYPD did a video canvas after the murder but came up empty because there’s nothing in front of the museum and they didn’t know where to start. We know exactly where she started and when she walked to and from the building. We know what she looked like in the lobby . . .”

“Yeah,” Nora said, “like Kyra Burke.”

“Right, but we want to see if we can pick her up on video getting in and out of the Kyra getup. There are all kinds of cameras in front of doors along the route she walked. It’s unlikely she left the hotel or went back in looking like the killer, so she must have whipped on the scarf and glasses—and maybe the blonde wig—as she walked. We may be able to see it. Agents are out now knocking on doors of homes and businesses all along those blocks to get a look at their cameras. And we’re hitting the MTA because all the city buses have forward-looking cameras. I’m hoping we catch her costume change.”