Everything had been set up for the drop. Twenty undercover officers had been scattered around the building that housed the French Market while Burke and I, along with three other officers, manned operations inside of a blue Ford Transit work van with the name Windy Electric Group painted in white letters on both sides. We sat inconspicuously among other work vans that were parked along North Clinton Street. The cameras that had been set up yesterday gave us a full 360-degree view of the building. The garbage can of interest was only half a block to our north.
The drop had been scheduled to take place at seven. Everyone was in place by three. Burke and I joined the control center at five. Several monitors in the van gave us visuals on all sides of the building, in all four directions. We watched quietly as people exited the market and walked casually by the garbage can. Some dropped in empty bottles, but nothing suspicious and no pink bag.
At 5:33 p.m., a young couple leaving the market walked by the garbage can. The woman tossed in a white Styrofoam food container. At 5:50 p.m., a middle-aged man finished his soda and tossed the empty bottle into the garbage can. Eight plainclothes officers were positioned around the building, two with direct sight to the garbage can and only yards away. One was seated on a nearby bench eating, while the other was walking up and down the street, dressed as a meter guy writing parking tickets.
At 6:08, I noticed a homeless man in large, baggy clothes and a dark hoodie slowly walking in the direction of the garbage can. He had a slight limp, as if he had hurt his knee or hip. Before reaching the can, he veered off unsteadily and headed to the curb, where he started drinking from a water bottle he pulled from underneath his sweatshirt. When he tipped his head back, the hoodie fell off, and his long hair fell out. I realized it was not a man but a woman. I suddenly thought about what Miles Carthew, the neighbor who lived down the street from Elliott’s apartment building, had told us about what happened the night Kantor died. He had described a small man with a limp, dressed in dark clothes, escaping through the door on the side of the building. I sat back and smiled. It wasn’t a man leaving Elliott’s apartment that night. It was a small woman dressed in men’s clothes. The Amazon driver had transported her in that trunk, dropped her off inside, and left with the empty trunk. She had killed Kantor. That man was Daphne, otherwise known as Bianca Wembley, a petite woman with a one-inch leg-length discrepancy and a diamond nose ring that Carthew saw shining under the streetlight that night. Bianca had also killed Thompson and, just as she had done with Kantor, tied him up using that becket bend knot, one she had learned from her grandfather as a little girl.
At 6:43, a tall man in a gray pin-striped suit walked to the garbage can, opened a briefcase, and appeared to be throwing away a folder. He stopped himself, paused momentarily, then changed his mind, put the folder back in his briefcase, and walked away. No one went near the can again for another thirty-one minutes. At 7:14, a short older woman in a blue sleeveless dress was walking a small dog and heading toward the garbage can. She dumped a bag into the garbage, but then she did something none of us expected. She pulled the bag back out, but it was empty.
“Keep an eye on her,” I said.
“Check the can now,” Burke said into his radio, instructing an officer sitting at a table. “But casually. Don’t look like you’re searching for anything.”
The guy got up and calmly walked over to the garbage can. He stood over it, wiped his mouth with a napkin, then tossed it in the can. “Pink bag is in,” he said into his hidden mic. “And it’s full. Either her dog shits like an elephant, or she just made the drop.”
“Old woman heading north on Clinton,” Burke said into his radio. “Blue sleeveless dress. Walking a small dog. Wait until she’s another block away, then take her.”
Within seconds, an unmarked van raced the wrong way up Clinton Street. It stopped a few feet away from the woman on the sidewalk. She stopped when she heard the doors fly open. Six guys jumped out of the van, quickly carried her and the dog into the back, closed the door, and sped away. The entire apprehension took less than ten seconds.
“You walk your dog near the French Market often?” the officer said.
The old woman sat in the interview room with her arms folded defiantly across her chest. She seemed more annoyed than she was angry. She didn’t appear scared in the slightest. Burke and I, along with two other detectives, watched the interview from the adjacent observation room.
“I walk my dog everywhere,” she said.
“But you live five miles north of that location,” the officer said.
“I didn’t know it was a crime to walk your dog in neighborhoods you don’t live in,” she said.
“No crime,” he said. “Just curious as to why you chose that location.”
“My dog is a papillon,” she said. “French. She likes the smell of the French Market. Comes naturally to her.”
The detective smiled. “Where did your dog stop and take a shit?” he asked.
“It’s a she,” the woman said. “And I have no idea. I wasn’t looking at the addresses when she did it.”
The detective looked down at his notes, then said, “What did you put in the garbage can in front of the market?”
“Is this a serious question?” the woman said.
“It is.”
The woman glared at him for a moment, then said, “Shit. I put shit in the garbage can. Where else am I supposed to put it?”
“You have a strange way of throwing shit into a garbage can,” he said. “I’ve never seen anyone open the bag, pour the shit out, then take the bag back with them.”
“I’m a conservationist,” the woman said, “and economical. Bags are reusable. Is that a crime too?”
“No, it’s not,” the detective said calmly. “Who asked you to drop the pink bag in the garbage can?”
“What pink bag?”
“The pink bag with all the cash in it.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the woman said. “If I saw money in a garbage can, I’d take it. I’m an old woman on a fixed income. I could use the extra cash. And I know my rights. If you’re not going to charge me with anything, then let me go. I’m not answering any more of your ridiculous questions.” She pushed back from the table for dramatic effect.
The detective closed his notebook, stood up, and left the room. He joined the rest of us. As they conferenced on next steps, I got a call from Balzac.
“I’m going to be sending you an email,” he said. “This Bianca Wembley could’ve used my services.”
“In what way?” I said.
“She had a lot of money sitting in an account, doing nothing.”
“How much?”
“Just over five million.”
“That’s a lot of money for an online arts-and-crafts store,” I said.
“What did you say?”
“Just thinking out loud,” I said. “What was her account activity like?”
“Busy. She deposited just over two million in the last year. She also had at least one major expense that she needed to pay.”
“What do you mean?”
“On the first of every month, she made a fifty-thousand-dollar payment to the same account.”
“Every month?”
“Without fail.”
“Any way to find out who owns the other account?”
“I knew you’d ask,” Balzac said. “Spruce Mountains LLC, which is registered to a Raymond Sanferd.”
“Raymond Sanferd?”
“That’s the name on the corporate paperwork.”
“Can you send all of this to me?”
“Already sent. It’s in your box.”
I exhaled slowly. The missing piece had finally fallen into place.
“I’m going to have something for you in about a week,” I said. “Be on the lookout.”
“A surprise?”
“If that’s what you want to call another million dollars for you to invest.”
Burke was still conferencing with the detectives, trying to figure out their next move. I caught his attention and nodded for him to join me on the other side of the room.
“Let her go,” I said. “You’re wasting your time.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Burke growled.
“She didn’t put the money into the can. The pink bag was already in there before she arrived. Remember that couple who dumped the Styrofoam food container. Inside of the container was the bag. The old woman was hired to open up the food container and rearrange it so the pink bag was visible for the pickup.”
“Jesus Christ!” Burke exclaimed. “We have to locate the couple.”
“You don’t,” I said. “Even if you found them, it wouldn’t matter. You’d just be slipping down a rabbit hole. There would be more names and people you’d have to track down.”
“Why are you so confident about this?”
“Because that old woman has no real information that’s going to help us. Bianca Wembley killed Kantor. And while I can’t prove it just yet, she probably killed Thompson too.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
I explained Eagle Rock to him.
“I get it, but why would Wembley kill her golden goose?” Burke said. “She was making money hand over fist with them.”
“She was, but Kantor and Thompson had broken the cardinal rule of membership. They struck out on their own and interacted directly with the women. They also started talking about the identities of other Eagle Rock members, and that was the most egregious violation, because sooner or later, the hidden identity of the person at the top of the chain would be in jeopardy.”
I explained to Burke the Greek mythology story of Daphne, her rejection of Apollo, and her ultimately turning into a laurel tree so that he couldn’t have her.
“So if Wembley killed Kantor and Thompson, then why would she kill herself?”
“She didn’t.”
“Who did?”
“Apollo.”
“And who the hell is that?”
“Raymond Sanferd. Our esteemed ambassador to the United Kingdom.”
“An ambassador?” he said. “Are you fuckin’ kidding me? Why would an ambassador get caught up in all this shit?”
“Fifty thousand dollars a month adds up to a lot more than a hundred and eighty thousand dollars a year, which is the most an ambassador can be paid.”
“You understand you’re accusing a United States ambassador of running a high-end escort service?”
“And murder.”
“You got proof of all this?”
I pulled out a folded copy of Bianca’s letter to her mother and handed it to Burke.
“Follow the money trail,” I said. “Ambassador Sanferd will be waiting for you at the end of it.”