He was waiting in the lobby of the Borough of Manhattan Community College. He was only inches taller than she was—five-foot-five or six, Codella guessed. His gray eyes, pensive and alert, studied her closely. He had a sensuous mouth, solid cheekbones, and a strong, symmetrical nose. He was handsome, she decided, though his good looks were somewhat obscured by a bad case of acne. He combed his fingers nervously through spiky blond highlights. There were whiskers below his sideburns where he obviously shaved. But the facial hair faded away at the jaw line. He had no hair above his upper lip and only patchy whiskers on his chin. His Adam’s apple was convincingly male. But his arms and shoulders still had not been altered dramatically by testosterone. He was a work in progress, she thought. “You’re Brandon Johnson?”
“I am.” His voice was low but gentle. “And you’re Detective Codella?”
“That’s right.” She shook his hand. “Is there a place we can sit? Can I buy you a cup of coffee or tea?”
He led her to a small student café, and they sat at a table. “How old are you, Brandon?” she asked, although she already knew.
“I’ll be twenty-three next month. Why?” He removed the tea bag from his cup.
“And you’re a student here at BMCC?”
“That’s right. I’m studying to be a respiratory therapist.” He straightened his posture as he said this. “I graduate next fall.”
“So you work at Park Manor to pay for school?”
“I did. I quit on Monday.”
“You quit?” Codella wondered why Hodges had not mentioned this fact. “Why did you quit?”
He shrugged.
“Well, you must have had a reason.”
He stared at the table.
She needed him to drop his shields. “How long have you been transitioning, Brandon?”
His head shot up.
“You’re on testosterone, aren’t you?” she asked in a matter-of-fact voice.
He nodded.
“How long?”
“About a year and a half. Why? What does that have to do with anything?”
“Maybe nothing,” she answered casually.
“Then why did you ask me?”
Codella leaned forward. “I’ll cut right to the chase, Brandon. I know you administered Lucy Merchant’s medication on Monday night. I saw the videotape and I’ve spoken to Constance Hodges. She admitted it.”
Brandon shrugged. “Well, good for her for telling the truth. I never tried to hide it. I don’t see why it was such a big deal. You do what you need to do to get the job done. Lucy didn’t respond to Cheryl so I helped her. Big deal. Hodges should never have lied about it in the first place.”
Codella found herself impressed by the unpolished but articulate young man. “You don’t like Constance Hodges, I take it?”
“What’s to like about her? All she cares about are her rich clients and covering her own ass.”
“What do you think of the other staff members?”
“They’re okay. Most of them.”
Codella watched him crack his knuckles. She leaned forward and stared into his eyes. “Did you put something into Lucy Merchant’s medicine cup Sunday night?”
“No!” Brandon slammed his fist against the table so loudly that students at surrounding tables jumped. “No,” he said with more control.
“Because it’s very likely that whatever she drank from that cup killed her.”
His face contorted with obvious distress. “I knew it. Oh, God. I just knew it.”
Codella remained silent as he described how he had helped Lucy drink her medicine that night, how she had made a face after the first sip and slapped the cup away.
“And spilled some of the contents?”
He nodded. “But I made her finish it.” The tears welling up in his eyes reflected the harsh fluorescent light shining down from the ceiling. “I killed her. Oh, God!” He put his elbows on the table and buried his head in his palms. “I didn’t know I was doing that. You have to believe me.”
If he was acting, he was a very convincing actor, Codella decided, but she wasn’t ready to buy anyone’s act just yet. “If you didn’t put something in the cup,” she asked, “then who did—and why?”
“I have no idea! Why would anybody want to kill Lucy Merchant?”
“I wish I knew.” Codella sipped her tea.
As Brandon looked around the room, Codella studied him closely. His gray Abercrombie & Fitch henley was threadbare. His wristwatch was a cheap Timex, and his Converses were coming apart at the toes. People had all kinds of reasons for doing unspeakable things, she reflected. And then, of course, there were the people who didn’t even need a reason to do them. She crossed her arms and wondered if Brandon was capable of unspeakable acts. When he returned his gaze to her she said, “You’re in a difficult position, you know.”
“I mean, all eyes are going to turn in your direction.”
“But I told you, it wasn’t me. I cared about Lucy.”
“It doesn’t matter what you say. No grand jury ever takes someone at their word. The circumstances aren’t in your favor. You were in the room. You weren’t supposed to handle her medication. You gave her the cup even after she tried to slap it away. You’re a respiratory therapy student, so you probably know about medications that cause breathing problems. You got that liquid down her throat despite her protests. And you’re on testosterone. Some expert will get on the stand and talk about your mental instability and aggression.” She paused. “And on top of all that, you returned to the scene of her death in the morning. You kissed her good-bye. What would you think if you were on a jury?”
In the silence, Codella saw a tear fall from his eyes.
She handed him a napkin. “Did you take anything from Lucy Merchant’s room when you went in there that morning to say good-bye?”
“Take something? What would I have taken?”
“A little gold charm, a dancer.”
“Lucy used to wear that charm around her neck when she first came to Park Manor. But then she started to tug at the chain, and she broke it one night. I put it into her bedside table. It’s been there ever since.”
“Apparently it wasn’t there on Monday. Julia Merchant noticed that it was missing that morning. She mentioned it to Constance Hodges.”
“I swear to you, I didn’t take it. What more can I say to convince you?”
“Tell me whatever it is you’re holding back.”
“I’m not holding anything back.”
And now in his tone she did sense him protesting a little too much. “I can’t take the heat off you, Brandon, unless you’re honest with me.”
He glanced over his shoulders.
“Right now. One chance,” she said. “No bullshit.”
“Okay, but not here. Let’s walk.”
Codella followed him down a long corridor. They went outside and crossed the West Side Highway. Brandon stopped on the snow-covered bike path and leaned on the railing overlooking the Hudson River. The still-bitter wind from Monday night’s nor’easter invaded every opening in Codella’s jacket. She raised her collar and stuffed her hands in her pockets. Her ears were already cold. Brandon wasn’t wearing a coat. He zipped his gray sweatshirt, pulled the hood over his head, and brought his hands inside the sleeves. Codella watched his eyes follow a floating chunk of ice bobbing uptown with the strong current. “Why are we out here? You must be freezing,” she said.
“I’m fine,” he snapped, but his chin was trembling. “I could feel all those people listening to us.”
“Start talking,” she said. “I need answers.”
Then he turned to her. “It’s Baiba. I think she’s involved.”
“Baiba Lielkaja?”
“She’s having an affair with Thomas Merchant.”
“How do you know this?”
“Because she told me.”
“When?”
“Yesterday. She asked me to come over and see her. She told me she’d been to his place the night before. She’s been there other times, too. She looked really bad. She had marks around her neck.”
Codella remembered her own visit to Lielkaja yesterday. She remembered the wool scarf coiled around the care coordinator’s neck. “Go on.”
“She told me that he’d put something into her drink Monday night and that he had sex with her, rough sex . . .” His eyes pleaded. “You can’t say you learned this from me. I promised I wouldn’t tell.”
Codella held up her hands to signal stop. “Go back, Brandon. He gave her what?”
“I don’t know. Like a date rape drug, I guess. In her drink. She drank it, and then she didn’t remember anything else.”
Codella thought of Jackie Freimor in her big Pelham Manor home bought with Merchant’s payoff. Was Baiba Lielkaja another Jackie Freimor? How many were there in the banker’s past?
“He made her feel special,” said Brandon. “And she liked what he did to her. She liked it. She admitted that to me.”
From his contorted expression, Codella sensed he found it hard to say these things and even harder to imagine Baiba Lielkaja doing them. And it occurred to her that Brandon Johnson might have his own deep and complicated feelings about Baiba Lielkaja.
“Merchant had his personal driver, Felipe, pick her up,” he continued. “And he gave her presents—Tiffany jewelry, flowers—and he took her to nice restaurants like the Four Seasons.”
“What are you suggesting, Brandon?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“Yes you do.”
He kicked the railing with his worn-out Converse. “What if she liked him so much that she—” Then he stopped. “Never mind.” He bent down, picked up a clump of snow, and flung it into the river.
“Say it, Brandon. Go on.”
“What if she liked him so much that she wanted to be the new Mrs. Thomas Merchant? What if she used me to kill Lucy?”
And then they were both silent. The theory fit with Codella’s existing suspicions about Lielkaja. But the new facts suggested other possibilities, too. If Thomas Merchant were capable of drugging and raping women, was he also capable of murdering his wife? Had he and Baiba plotted murder together? She took Brandon’s arm and pulled him away from the railing. “Come on. Let’s go back inside. It’s easy to get ahead of ourselves. We don’t have all the facts yet. We need more.”
He was silent as they returned to the lobby of BMCC. Then he turned to her and said, “I didn’t kill Lucy. She was a beautiful, sad woman with lots of bad memories. But she lit up whenever I came near her, and I cared about her. Not because she was famous. It was because we connected. She communicated with me in her own limited way. I was the only one.”
Codella watched him disappear down the corridor. He had definitely fed Lucy Merchant the oxycodone that killed her, but she doubted he had done it deliberately. The question was: Whose guileless instrument had he been? Baiba’s? Merchant’s? Or someone else’s?