NEXT MORNING, I’m first to arrive at the precinct for day-shift. Night-shift has gossiped through to the wee hours. By six a.m. there’s a lineup at my desk with patrol officers and detectives wanting to know if there’s a break in the case, an arrest imminent. They have seen McGowan’s presser and wonder if I’m being bumped from the investigation. Pleading The Fifth is my best defense.
I’m spared further questions by the approach to my desk of an attractive blonde, well-dressed, wearing stylish specs. She wears a Visitors ID badge on a lanyard around her neck. In one hand is a coffee from the nearby Starbucks, in the other a file folder of papers two-inches thick.
As the woman nears, she stumbles. The two-inch-thick folder slips from her fingers sending documents flying into the air. Loose paper flutters to the floor settling in squares like a child’s hopscotch.
“Shit, shit, shit!” the woman says, kneeling. “Sorry!”
Ever chivalrous, I bend to the floor to help. “No worries,” I say, my tone reassuring.
“I’m such a geek!” the woman says.
We’re head-to-head trying to reassemble the scattered pile of documents. Finally, after three minutes, the woman gives-up. “It’s no use; I’ll just have to wing it.”
She stuffs the remaining papers into the folder in no special order, dog-eared and creased. Satisfied, she stands. She’s willowy and wearing three-inch heels almost as tall as me. Her golden hair is drawn back in a braid behind her ears and falls to beyond her slender shoulders. Her nose is large yet seductively Romanesque.
“I’d offer my hand, but…” she says with a shrug to show her hands are full.
“Fortune,” I say by way of an introduction.
“Ah, yes, the Detective.”
“And you would be…?”
“Wozniak, Chloe, the Profiler.”
“Of course, you are.”
“You don’t approve?”
“On the contrary; happy for any help we can get,” though what I’m really thinking is Why are you here?
Considering McGowan’s pronouncement that we’re not dealing with a serial killer, her presence, to me, seems superfluous.
“Of course, you are,” she says, as if reading my thoughts.
I don’t offer her so much as a grin.
“A desk?” she says. “Somewhere to drop this load?”
Ah, yes, I think: Load, Shit, which in my line of work flows invariably downhill.
✽✽✽
Gabby arrives a half hour later. “Truce?” she says.
“It’s on me, Gabby, I’m the one owes you an apology. You’re right: I can’t hold my liquor. I shouldn’t drink.”
On the drive in, I conclude the tryst at the cabin between Gabby and I was a dream—surreal and intense, but an illusion fueled by drink, nonetheless. Added to the painkillers, a toxic combination.
A simple version that, for me, is better than the truth.
By seven o’clock, O’Neill and Upton arrive. Upton convenes an all-hands meeting to update, advise, coordinate, reassign the troops, and to introduce the team to the Profiler, who will give us the benefit of her expertise, code word in my business for BS.
Before the meeting, Upton takes both Gabby and me aside.
“You might be wondering what Wozniak is doing here,” he begins, by way of explaining the arrival of the Profiler. “Let’s just say, I’m not prepared to hitch my horse to Chief McGowan’s wagon.”
Gabby says, “Which is to say you believe the crimes are connected?”
“No, Detective Fernandez. Which is to say, I’m not prepared to hitch my horse to his wagon either.”
Upton jerks a thumb at me, after which we enter the meeting together.
✽✽✽
Wozniak begins by saying, “I won’t bore you with details you can just as easily glean from a two minute search on Google: The unknown subject is not evil, he’s no genius, he’s not insane. He’s average, to slightly above average, IQ. According to what I’ve read in the reports filed by Detectives Fortune and Fernandez, he’s personable and conversational; that is, he likes to talk. Aptly, you call him The Chatterbox.
“He could be a loner, he could be a social butterfly. Most certainly, he’s a gadfly. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, it means an annoying person, especially one who can provoke others into action through criticism.”
Tommy Upton says, “Detective Fortune has been ordered by our Chief of Detectives to hang-up when The Chatterbox calls. What’s your opinion on that, Doctor?”
Wozniak grimaces as if she has gas. She makes a noise sounding like a tsk.
“A risky strategy, Inspector. From what I read in your files, it may provoke the Un-sub to escalate, to make it personal. He craves the attention.”
Wozniak looks at me.
“According to our Chief of Detectives,” I say, “he already has. Made it personal.”
Upton says, “Could we use this relationship as a way to bait him?”
Wozniak shakes her pretty head. “He’ll see through it, Inspector, realize what Detective Fortune is doing. There’s no upside to the subject taking such a chance. His intent is to torment and to humiliate the Detective personally, and the police, generally. Publicly and completely. To do this, he’ll bide his time.”
My turn. “If what you say is accurate, what do you recommend?”
Wozniak thinks a moment before replying. When she does, she says, “Follow his lead wherever he wants it to go. So long as he’s talking to you, he’s not out there killing other women. He may reveal something of importance, intentionally or unintentionally. Eventually, he may want to meet with you face-to-face.”
“To surrender and to confess?” I say.
Wozniak shrugs. “Possibly. Or to kill you.”
✽✽✽
In McGowan’s presser the previous evening, the Chief of Ds plays coy. He tows the party line: The activity in the park is a result of a coordinated investigation by the NYPD into crimes that may or may not be connected. He issues no warning to divorced mothers to shelter in place, no advisory to women with left-breast, heart-shaped tattoos to have them removed. Just a composite image constructed by me describing a Person of Interest in a hoodie.
We’d all hoped for McGowan to announce the return of Son of fucking Sam. Naturally, everyone is disappointed. But as we’re professionals, we realize police work has nothing to do with instinct and nothing to do with assumption. The investigator using either approach risks demotion to patrol lickitty-split.
Contrary to what makes for good drama, in real life it isn’t about the Arrest. The Arrest is just where the wheels of justice begin to turn. In the American Criminal Justice System, careers are made on Conviction. Justice is a performance-based model where reward is apportioned exclusively on the rate of conviction, not on the rate of Arrest. Whether you’re an investigator, a prosecutor, or a judge, it all comes down to how many perps you can convict, put behind bars, and for how many man-years you can keep them there.
If you don’t believe it, watch Making a Murderer and John Grisham’s The Innocent Man.
For Justice, my ongoing dialogue with The Chatterbox is all risk and no reward. The more I talk to him the more ammunition his attorney will have for acquittal if the case ever gets to trial. The son-of-a-bitch could be recording me as an ultimate claim to his Fifth Amendment Right against self-incrimination.
Me? I’m worried The Chatterbox will kill again as payback for me shutting him down. I tell this to Gabby.
“You give yourself too much credit, Dex. Like McGowan says, stop looking at the big picture.”
“I was too quick to agree.”
“In my experience, it’s never a bad thing to agree with the Chief of Ds.”
Face pressed close to her computer screen, Gabby says, “We know virtually nothing about Kelly Plett, Dex. She kind of fell through the cracks when the girl in the park, Annie Taylor, was killed. So, let’s learn more about Kelly. And Miranda Livingstone. Face it, we’ve been too busy staring at the forest to look properly at the trees. Literally.”
Sitting back, I run a hand through my hair. “Maybe you’re right.” Pulling a coin from my pocket, I flip. “Call it,” I say while the coin is still in the air.
“Heads.”
The coin falls back to land in my palm. Turning it on the back of my opposite hand, I say, “Tails. I’ll take Livingstone, you take Plett.”
Gabby looks disappointed. “I was looking forward to spending more time with Doctor Livingstone. Best two out of three?”
I message Melissa Johns and Tony Giardano to join Gabby and me at our desk.
Once again senior officer-in-charge, I assign Tony to ride with Gabby, Melissa to ride with me. Gabby’s expression seems to say: You screwing with me by partnering me Tony? My own expression is self-evident.
“We have a stack of door-to-door reports to sift through. Upton has assigned investigators to re-interview neighbors, people working in the area, issue a public appeal to anyone who might have been passing by the buildings during the time-frame the women arrived home. We need to re-interview employers, co-workers, family, friends, and acquaintances up to three degrees of separation.
“We’re reviewing recent prison releases, probation, half-way houses, charges for any sex-related offense recently dismissed, dropped, or committed, but not yet come to trial.
“The team is canvassing libraries and internet cafes to see if either Miranda or Kelly was online. We need to re-examine the crime scene evidence and postmortem examinations. We need to take a second and third look at all available surveillance video. Lift stills and circulate photo images of the composite and anyone captured on film looking either remotely suspicious or of potential interest to the investigation. Lift and circulate stills from the Yankee Stadium concession booth. Maybe there’s a boyfriend or an ex-husband on tape watching the Yankees get thumped by the Red Sox. Major cases are broken on less all the time.”
“Grunt-work,” Tony moans.
“Our job, Tony,” Gabby says, unsympathetic. “They don’t pay us to watch internet porn.”
“I’ve outgrown the internet. These days I’m into virtual reality.”
“Maybe I should tell this to your wife.”
“You kidding me? She’s the one got me hooked.”
“Enough,” I say. “It’s still a double homicide because we know Livingstone and Plett are connected. Plenty of huzzahs to go around if we close it, traffic patrol if we don’t.”
Before leaving the office, I’m cornered by Chloe Wozniak.
“I head back to Albany day after,” she says. “There’s something I’d like to discuss before I get on the plane.”
“That you couldn’t discuss earlier in the meeting?” I say, curious.
She steps in close. Lowering her voice, she says, “I think your Chief is wrong, Dexter. About The Chatterbox. Dead wrong.”