Codella sped to the 171st and filled in Haggerty.
“So what are you doing here?” he asked.
“I need you to print out some photos for me.”
“Sure.” He sat at his desk.
Codella selected two photos from her iPhone collection and forwarded them to Haggerty’s email. He downloaded the images to his desktop and sent them to the printer across the room. She stared at the enlarged photos. They were a bit grainy, but all the pertinent details were still dramatically visible.
“Thanks.” She stuffed them into a manila folder. “I’ve got to go now.” She touched his two-day-old beard and kissed his cheek.
On the way back to Lielkaja’s, she made her obligatory call to McGowan. “There’s another body,” she said. “A woman named Baiba Lielkaja. The Nostalgia care coordinator from Park Manor. There was a suicide note at the scene, but it’s bullshit. She was murdered.”
His silence told her he was reserving judgment.
“CSU is there, and we’ve got a canvass going. I’m bringing Thomas Merchant up to the station tonight. I’ll brief him on the autopsy results and see what I get out of him.”
The sun had set, streetlamps were on, and reporters were clustered outside the crime scene tape when Codella returned to Lielkaja’s building. A wind-blown brunette holding a microphone came at her as she emerged from her car, but Codella held up a hand and said “No comment” in a voice that stopped her cold.
She signed in with García and found Cooper and Muñoz on the second floor. “Tell me you’ve got something,” she said.
“Yeah. We’re catching residents as they come home from work. There’s only twelve units in the building and we’ve accounted for eight so far.” Cooper seemed eager to be the spokesman. He read off his pad. “A widow lives alone in 2B—Mrs. Pagonis—and she saw a silver-haired man in an overcoat leave the building just after four PM yesterday. She was coming in as he was going out.”
Codella looked from Cooper to Muñoz. “Merchant has gray hair.”
“I know, and it’s him,” Muñoz pronounced with certainty. “It’s got to be him. After Cooper spoke to her, I went back up and asked her for more details. She described a tall, thin, distinguished-looking man. He was wearing an elegant black overcoat, she said, and when the outside door closed behind him, she watched him walk down the steps and duck into a black SUV.”
Merchant had his personal driver, Felipe, pick her up, Codella remembered Brandon saying. “I was with Lielkaja at three thirty,” she said. “Merchant must have come right after me. Was he carrying anything as he left?”
“You mean like a Tiffany bag?” Muñoz shook his head. “Not that she saw.”
Codella shrugged. “Anything else?”
“Yeah,” said Cooper. “A couple in 4A was returning home around eight PM and a young man, early twenties, came in through the front door right behind them. Didn’t use a key. Wasn’t a resident. Said he was going to a friend’s.”
“Description?”
“Green parka. Gray sweatshirt. Blond streaks in the hair.”
“Shit!” Codella said.
“What?” asked Muñoz.
“That description matches Brandon Johnson. I saw him early this afternoon. He was wearing the gray sweatshirt. He’s got the blond streaks. But he told me he’d been here in the middle of the day, not at night.” She reached in her pocket for dry-mouth gum and stuffed a piece in her mouth. Dr. Abrams had told her she might want to invest in the company that made this gum or else try acupuncture, which seemed to help some people get rid of this lingering and annoying chemo side effect. When she’d left Brandon Johnson this morning, she reflected now, she had trusted his veracity. But how could this data not rekindle her suspicions? “Did you find Lielkaja’s phone in there?”
“On the floor under the bed,” said Cooper. “Lots of calls unanswered. I had them checked out as soon as the CSU guys lifted prints.”
“And?”
He read off his notes. “Three calls from Park Manor—two this morning, one around noon.”
Those calls, Codella guessed, would have been from Hodges, wondering why her Nostalgia care coordinator hadn’t shown up to work. “And the others?”
“Two from the guy you just named—Brandon Johnson.”
“When did he call?”
Cooper checked his notes. “Just after six PM last night and again at seven.”
“Find out where he was when he made those calls.”
Cooper jotted a note. “And there were three calls from a cell phone that belongs to Thomas Merchant.”
“Ahh. You saved me the best for last.”
Cooper smiled.
“You’re absolutely sure?”
“Verizon doesn’t lie, and his name’s right in her directory.”
“What time did he call her?”
“Ten PM last night and nine AM this morning.”
Codella turned to Muñoz. “Those were after she was dead.”
“Which suggests he didn’t know she was dead.”
“Unless he’s the one who killed her and he placed the calls to throw us off.” She looked back to Cooper. “Find out where he was when he made those calls.”
She climbed one flight up to Lielkaja’s apartment with Muñoz and Cooper behind her. The body had been removed. As she watched from the door, a crime scene investigator wearing a white Tyvek jumpsuit leaned over the pullout couch and picked up a hair or fiber with tweezers.
The lead investigator—it wasn’t Banks or anyone else she knew—came to speak with her. His combed-back hair accentuated his severe widow’s peak. His placid expression and foreshortened neck made him look tortoise-like. “What can you tell me?” she asked.
“There was no forced entry.”
She nodded. She knew that already.
“And no struggle.”
“What about prints? How many sets did you lift off the laptop?”
“There were no prints on the keys,” he said.
“How about on the suicide note?”
“Nothing.”
She pointed to the Juice Generation cup. “Whatever’s in that cup killed her, and I need to know what it is.”
Muñoz had come up behind her. “Can you get your hands on a Raman analyzer?” he asked the CSU detective.
“Sure. I can do that.”
“Can you do it as quickly as possible?” Muñoz asked politely. Then he turned to Codella. “Raman Spectroscopy,” he explained. “You just point and scan. I wish I’d had one of those when I was a narc.”
“You’re no narc anymore.” Codella squeezed his arm gratefully. “I need you to find me Brandon Johnson. Bring him to Manhattan North. He’s got some explaining to do.”