Maggie let Luke Nichols’s phone ring five times before a male voice came on. “Hey, this is Luke. Leave me a message.”
“Mr. Nichols. This is Detective Margaret Savage. I’m a police officer working with the New York Police Department. My partner and I need to ask you some questions about Zoe McCabe.” She finished her message and ended the call. Seconds later Luke Nichols called back.
“This is Luke Nichols. Couldn’t quite get to the phone in time. You said you were calling about Zoe?”
“Yes. We need to talk to you about her.”
“What about Zoe? Is anything wrong?”
“We’d rather talk to you about this in person.”
“Jesus. Something must be wrong. Where are you?”
“Outside the Laughing Toad, where you and Zoe had dinner last night.”
“How do you know about that?”
“Like I said, we’d rather talk in person. Can we come to your place?”
There were a few seconds of silence.
“It’s important,” said Maggie.
“I could meet you at the Toad. My place is kind of a slum.”
“The Toad’s too public. We need to talk to you in private. If you’d rather, we can talk at the Seventh Precinct.”
Luke Nichols sighed loudly. “No. That’s okay. We can talk here,” he said. “I’m at 139 Essex Street. It’s only a ten-minute walk from where you are now. Apartment 502. Buzz the buzzer and I’ll let you in. Then start climbing stairs.”
“Five flights?”
“You got it.”
“We’ll see you in ten.”
Luke Nichols’s “slum” was a studio apartment in one of the neighborhood’s unrenovated tenements. After climbing the five flights surrounded by assorted cooking and tobacco smells, McCabe and Maggie knocked on the door marked 502. Luke Nichols answered and the two detectives entered a room that was small, dark and dreary. A single window that looked like it hadn’t been washed in five years faced an airshaft, and the only place to sit was the queen-sized bed that had been squeezed in and took up about sixty percent of the available floor space. Most of the rest of the floor space was filled with a selection of guitars and a professional-looking set of drums.
“You’re a musician,” said Maggie.
Nichols grinned and said, “How could you tell?”
He was a good-looking young man, probably in his midtwenties, with a mop of dark curly hair.
“You play with a band?” asked Maggie after Nichols had ushered them in.
“When I can get gigs. I also play piano. Both jazz and classical. Piano’s really my thing. Obviously no room for one in here. But sometimes I play and sing in hotel lounges. Gershwin. Cole Porter. That sort of stuff.”
“Like Bobby Short at the Carlyle?” asked McCabe.
“I wish. But yeah. The same idea.”
At least the bed was made and the apartment looked tidy. Rather than sit on the bed, Maggie and McCabe elected to stand. So did Nichols. “What’s this all about?” he asked. “Did something bad happen to Zoe?”
“That’s what we’re trying to find out,” said Maggie. “Where do you know her from?”
“We were at Juilliard together. She was in the theater school. I was in the piano program.”
“What’s your relationship with her?” asked McCabe.
Luke offered a sad smile. “As far as she’s concerned we’re just good friends.”
“But you’d like to be more than just good friends?”
“I would. We dated a few times right after college but then she got involved with another guy, a doctor, and that was that. Zoe was living with him up until a couple of weeks ago when he cheated on her and she kicked him out. I put in my application to be the doc’s replacement during dinner at the Toad last night. But she’s not buying what I’m selling. At least not yet. Still wants to be”—he made air quotes with his fingers—“just friends.”
“Good friends?”
“I think so. The dating thing aside, Zoe’s always been one of my favorite people.”
“So the two of you had dinner last night at the Laughing Toad?”
“That’s right. We were celebrating the final performance of Othello and how, judging by the reviews, it was going to give her career a big bump. In fact, she told me Randall Carter wanted to take the play uptown to Lincoln Center and maybe wanted to keep her as Desdemona. Which would be huge for her. What about it?”
Maggie showed Luke the police sketch and the photo. “Did you happen to see this guy there?”
Nichols only needed to glance at the picture. “Yeah, we saw him. He was standing near the bar staring at Zoe. Kind of freaked her out. I would have thought she’d be used to it. I mean guys are always looking at women who look like Zoe, but this guy seemed kind of screwed up.”
“Screwed up how?” Maggie asked.
“I’m not sure Zoe saw the screwed-up part. But maybe she did. Anyway, while he was looking at her he seemed to have this . . . I don’t know what you’d call it . . . this episode. Or maybe seizure is a better word. Zoe noticed me looking over her shoulder at him. I guess I reacted because she turned back to look at him again, but whatever it was might have been over by that time. After he came out of it he just smiled at her and gave this little wave.”
“How long was he staring?” asked Maggie.
“Geez, I don’t know. A minute or so. Maybe a couple.”
“Can you describe the episode? The seizure?”
“Hard to describe. But sort of midway through the stare he seemed to go into some weird kind of trance for like ten or twenty seconds and when he came out of it he was more or less normal again. Just sort of smiled and nodded his head at her.
“Anything else?”
No. After that he disappeared into the crowd at the bar.”
“And Zoe didn’t indicate that she knew who he was?”
“She said she didn’t.”
“Did you see him again?” McCabe asked.
Nichols shook his head. “No.”
“What happened then?”
Luke shrugged. “Nothing. We finished our food and wine. Zoe insisted on paying. She just got cast for a TV spot for Match.com and she knows I haven’t had any good gigs in a while. I’m kind of hurting moneywise. After she got her card back we left.”
“You both went straight home?”
“Not immediately. We talked for a couple of minutes outside the Toad. I kissed her and asked for about the fifth time if we could start dating again now that Alex . . . the guy she’d been living with . . . now that Alex was toast. Like I told you, she blew me off with a same old can’t-we-just-be-friends line. I just said sure, we’ll always be friends, and asked her if she wanted me to walk her home. She said no. That she’d be fine. We both live nearby but in opposite directions. You people think the guy in that picture did something bad to her?”
Maggie figured it was okay to tell him. Zoe’s picture and the story of Annie Nakamura’s murder were already on TV and they’d be in all the papers in the morning. “We don’t know for sure. We think it’s possible.”
“Oh Jesus Christ. She’s not dead or anything? Like that other actress and the dancer?”
“At the moment we just don’t know where she is,” said Maggie. “But it doesn’t look good. A woman who lived on the same floor as Zoe was found murdered last night.”
Nichols looked stunned. Maggie handed him a card. “Please give me a call if you can think of something that might help us find the man in the picture.”
“Portland, Maine?”
“Yes. But at the moment my partner and I are on temporary assignment with the New York Police.”
Nichols was still staring at the number on the card when Maggie and McCabe left and started walking back down the five poorly lit flights of stairs to the ground floor. When they had exited the building, Maggie said, “It’s looking more and more like this ‘big weird dude’ is definitely our guy.”
“Yeah. Now all we have to do is find him. And hopefully her. The driver’s license should be a big help. Might lead us right to him,” said McCabe.
“Putting the sketch out there should also get us some answers. Somebody’s got to know who he is.”
To make that happen, McCabe called Astarita on his personal cell. “You still in the office?”
“Yeah. It’s looking like an all-nighter. What do you need?”
He told Art about the name Tyler and the search for the driver’s license.
“Good. Sounds like a solid lead.”
“It is, but we should also get the sketch Mooney gave us out to the media as soon as possible. Maybe somebody will recognize him and we’ll get a last name.”
“Yeah. We’ve already got it out there. But I’m not sure I want to call him a suspect yet.”
McCabe shrugged. “That’s fine. Let’s just go with a person of interest. At least for the time being. The techs pick up anything on seat A12?”
“Probably still working on it,” said Art. After a pause he added, “There is one other thing. Ralston found the homeless guy he thought he saw last night.”
“By 121 Clinton?”
“No. Curled up near a tenement on the next block. Stanton Street. All the police activity scared him away from Zoe’s place. Ralston brought him in for questioning. Name’s Jamil Harris. Sad case. Used to be in the army. Lost both legs in Iraq. Then lost all interest in life. Except for booze where and when he can get it. Tells an odd story.”
“Such as?”
“First off, he did see our guy carry the rug out to a black SUV. Saw him stuff it in the back. Then the guy came back and checked out Jamil. Kicked him a couple of times to see if he was awake. Jamil pretended to be out cold. But when he felt a knife blade slide against his throat, he opened his eyes. Guy was staring at him. Mean look. Harris thought for sure he was a dead man. But then instead of killing him the guy put the knife away and get this . . . he takes out a bunch of cash and slips Jamil a twenty. Which naturally he spent on booze.”
McCabe thought about that. Thoughts of murder. Followed by a random act of charity. An odd story indeed.