part0017

The next morning we spent an hour at the surgery. The doctor took the opportunity to give Dehan a general checkup and ordered a full screening of her blood. While Dehan was dressing Dr. Kelly came out to talk to me. She had red hair, freckles and blue eyes that searched my face from behind a professional smile.

“Haven’t seen much of you lately, John.”

I returned the smile. “My grandmother used to say that there is no rest for the wicked. She forgot to tell me there is no rest for those who pursue them, either.”

“How about when they take on the responsibility of a family?”

“What are you telling me, Kate?”

“We have to wait for the results, but some of the signs are there, and then there’s the old feminine intuition.” She gave a small laugh. “If she isn’t now, she will be soon. Are you looking for it, or was this an accident?”

I thought about the question for a moment and gave a small shrug. “Neither. I guess we’re not looking for it, but we’re not trying real hard to avoid it, either.”

“You’re not a young man, John. Having a child is a hell of a responsibility. And an only child is demanding in a very special way. There is a lot to think about here.”

“Yeah,” I nodded, “but I didn’t want to do too much thinking until we had something concrete to think about.”

She gave a feminine little grunt, narrowed her eyes and smiled all at the same time. It was an expression that said she thought I had it all what the Brits call “arse about tit.” The wrong way around.

“Carmen is not young, not in gynecological terms, but she could certainly consider having another child, if she is pregnant. That would give the baby a brother or a sister, which some people consider to be a good idea…”

I laughed. “We haven’t even got one yet!”

She nodded a while, blinking at me. “That’s kind of the point I’m making, John. You’re both cops. You’re both accustomed to analyzing situations, exploring angles, planning ahead. But always in the context of other people’s lives.”

“That’s true.”

“Now you’re going to have to adapt, and apply all of those skills to yourselves and your children, as a family.” She gave a small laugh. “Only now you won’t be bringing anyone to justice. You’ll just be making them safe and happy.”

“Kate, I am sure you’re right…” I gave a small frown. “But I am still not sure what you’re getting at. What’s your point?”

“I’m just wondering how easy, or difficult, it’s going to be to do that if you’re both employed as cops. It’s not only that the risk to each of you personally is also a risk to the baby, but also the long, unpredictable hours, and the stress you’re both under.” She hesitated. “Carmen mentioned, in confidence, the case you’re working on.” She put her hand on my arm. “I’m just saying, it’s stuff that needs to be thought about. It’s not like you’re young parents.”

On cue Dehan stepped out of the consulting room. Her eyes were bright and she was smiling.

“Couple of days?”

The doctor smiled. “It shouldn’t take more than that. I’ll call you.”

I didn’t get much chance to think about what she’d said. By the time we got back to the car my cell was ringing. Dehan leaned on the roof of the car while I answered.

“Stone, it’s Mike O’Connor.”

“You got something?”

“No, I just felt like bonding. Yeah I got something.”

“OK, so you’re a wiseass, congratulations. What have you got?”

“Last night, eleven forty-five, Vargas leaves his club, gets in a Porsche Boxster and drives to Castle Hill and Homer. There he parked outside the Church of the Holy Father and Son at the End of Days and went inside. He was in there for a little over half an hour and came out again. He got back in his car and drove back to the Mescal, where he left his car and went back inside.”

I was quiet for a minute, thinking. “Any other contact?”

“No, that was it. It didn’t seem urgent enough to wake you from your beauty sleep.”

“OK, stay with him. Keep me posted.” I hung up and leaned on the car opposite Dehan. “Vargas paid a visit to Campbell last night at a quarter to twelve. They were together for just over half an hour, and Vargas went back to the Mescal club.”

She snorted. “So he got a sudden need for spiritual guidance at eleven forty-five, and Campbell is so good he put him on the straight and narrow again after just thirty-five minutes.”

“So if he didn’t go to see him for spiritual guidance, and we agree he didn’t, what did he go for?”

“At midnight? Something that only required thirty-five minutes...?”

“Correct me if I’m making unwarranted assumptions...”

I waited. She nodded and gestured at me with both hands. “Sure, go ahead.”

“Thirty-five minutes at that time of night is going to be one of three things: a fleeting sexual encounter, a rapid exchange of information, a rapid exchange of some other, physical object. Can you think of anything else?”

She frowned and half-smiled and mixed it all together as an expression of confusion.

“I mean, off the top of my head… I’m pretty sure there might be hundreds of reasons. I just can’t think of one right now.”

“Neither can I. People get together for a whole lot of reasons, but the shorter the period of time they’re together, the more precise the reason. Add into the equation the late hour, either I have to tell you something, you need to tell me something, I have to give you something or you have to give me something. Prove me wrong.”

“I can’t, not off the top of my head.”

A chill breeze moved her hair and she shuddered. I rubbed my face with my hands. “Even if he was suddenly moved by the Holy Father to go and seek guidance from the prophet, that would still be an exchange of information. Even if Campbell’s great uncle Johnny Walker had called Vargas and asked him to take James two hundred bucks as a belated birthday present, we are still looking at an exchange of physical objects.”

“OK, let’s say, provisionally, that you’re right. That he was here for an exchange of information or physical goods, or both. Where does that take us?”

“The next step is to decide what kind of exchange was most likely.”

Her frown deepened. “And how do we do that?”

“We look at their common ground, at what links them. What are they most likely to exchange information about? What sort of goods are they most likely to exchange?”

She shook her head and pulled open the car door. “You’re reaching, Stone.”

“That’s why I’m asking you to prove me wrong.”

She climbed in the car and I got in behind the wheel. She said:

“OK, what’s their common ground? What are their links?”

I fired up the cat and sat for a moment thinking, letting the big engine idle. After a moment I asked her, “Do you take Campbell for a drug user?”

She didn’t hesitate. “No. He is the pure warrior of Christ. I don’t see him doing drugs.”

I pulled away and headed north toward Morris Park Avenue.

“What about coke?”

She looked surprised. The she made a thoughtful face and looked straight ahead out of the windshield at the midmorning traffic. “Coke...”

“If I’m honest...” She paused, sighed. “If I’m honest I can see that. He has that inflated ego that often comes from regular use of coke. And I can see him rationalizing it as being necessary in order to do God’s work.”

I nodded. “So it’s not hard to imagine Campbell calling Vargas, ‘We need to talk, the cops have come to talk to me ...,’ yadda yadda, as you might say, ‘Come and see me and on the way bring a few grams of coke.’”

“No, that’s not hard to imagine.”

“So we attach that information to the chief’s application to Judge Petersen.”

She pulled her phone from her pocket and dialed. She put it on speaker.

“Sir, we just heard from the team who’ve been tailing Nelson Vargas.”

“Good. Any progress?”

“Yes, sir. Last night, quarter to twelve, Vargas left the Mescal Club and drove to James Campbell’s church. Campbell has an apartment attached to the church. Vargas spent about thirty-five minutes with him, then left and returned to the Mescal Club. Sir, taken together with the fact that we can connect five of the six victims with both Vargas and Campbell, and given the fact that what brings the two of them together is their hatred of women...”

“I agree, Carmen. I think that is enough to take to Judge Petersen, and I think we stand a good chance of her signing off on a warrant to tap their telephone lines.”

“Landlines and cells, sir.”

“And emails and other media.”

“All electronic forms of communication, Carmen.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Anything else?”

She glanced at me. I shook my head.

“No, sir. With a bit of luck this might just swing it.”

“Here’s hoping, Carmen.”

She hung up and we sat in silence as we cruised down Morris Park toward White Plaines.

“So now we need a progress report from O’Brien and Olvera,” I said. “And I want to know what the hell is happening with our expert profiler from the Bureau.”

The answer to both questions was waiting for us when we arrived at the station a little more than half an hour later. O’Brien and Olvera had pulled up chairs to our desks and were busy writing a report together.

Dehan dropped into her chair while I pulled off my jacket and said, “What have you got?”

It was O’Brien who answered.

“George Allen is the only one who has credible alibis. He was in Rochester at the time of all six murders.”

She handed us each a sheet of paper where each of the murders was listed, and alongside each one was Allen’s alibi.

“You can see the details there,” she said, “but in synthesis, he was either in meetings attended by board members and managers, or, in the case of Sharon Lipschitz and Maria Ortiz, he was traveling on the West Coast and has witnesses, bills, tickets and credit card receipts to prove it. The rest are much shakier.”

Olvera took over. His voice was startlingly deep.

“Reverend James Campbell can prove conclusively that he was preaching to a congregation in a rented hall on East 172nd Street at the time of Maria Ortiz’s murder and at the time of Olga Hernandez’s murder. For the rest,” he handed us each a sheet similar to the first, “he claims he was either preaching or in meetings with disciples, but we haven’t been able to trace anyone who can corroborate those claims.”

O’Brien took over again, handing out two more pieces of paper to me and to Dehan.

“That leaves Nelson Vargas and Golam Heitz. Heitz is in some ways the most problematic. Because he deliberately seeks to be alone, and the first thing his neighbors and acquaintances tell you about him is that he is a loner and they hardly ever see him. The guy is like clockwork, he rises at the same time every day and goes to bed at the same time every night. He does shift work, and will adjust automatically to each shift and slip immediately into his new routine. So his neighbors can confirm things like when he gets up, at what time he leaves and returns, and his workmates can confirm at what time he arrives and whether they saw him in the canteen, but what nobody can confirm for sure is where he was or what he was doing in between. And in all cases, from Mary Campbell right through to Claire Carter, it is feasible that he could have slipped away and made it to the scene of the crime and back again without his absence being noticed.” She gave a reluctant smile. “He’s the kind of guy you notice when he’s there, but you don’t notice when he ain’t. In some cases, we’ve indicated on the list, the timing is tight, but in all the cases it is possible.

“Finally, Nelson Vargas. He relies entirely on the testimony of his gang members and the girls who work at his club, so in one sense his alibis are unbreakable, but equally they have a very poor credibility rating. You see on the list that each one is virtually identical: he was at the club and he lists the people who were with him.”

Dehan drew breath but O’Brien preempted her.

“What you may find interesting, though, Detectives, is that where during Detective Alvarez’s investigation five years back he used Jose Budia for all of his alibis, when we followed them up, he didn’t name Jose in any of them.”

Dehan made like the Cheshire cat and grinned. I leaned back in my chair and took a deep breath.

“That is very good work, very good work indeed.”

We thanked them and they left us at our desks, staring at each other. Finally, Dehan said, “So where does that leave us, Stone?”

I chewed my lip for a bit and gave my head a single shake.

“The fact that he faked his alibis tells us very little. That’s like a knee-jerk reaction for him. Half the time he probably can’t remember where he was at any given time or date because he’s too stoned or drunk. But the fact that he has withdrawn Jose from his alibis is useful, because it means we can take those alibis to Jose and ask him, ‘Are these alibis true or false,’ and when he says ‘False,’ that will confirm for the jury exactly what they will be suspecting.”

She nodded. “Yeah, but it doesn’t get us any closer to proving that Vargas and Campbell conspired to kill these girls.”

“No, the connection with the girls is still tenuous at best.”

“It’s frustrating.” She took a deep breath and held it. “It’s frustrating that we can’t get anything stronger than the fact that they crossed paths with these women, and it’s frustrating that we can connect all of them except Sharon Lipschitz...”

I gave a few exaggerated nods and added, “And isn’t that exactly what this guy does? Isn’t that exactly what he did with the dates? Like we said before, he knows the cops are going to look for patterns of behavior to try and profile him, so he creates patterns and then breaks them: dates, kids, race, prostitution, sexual morality...”

She goggled at me. “You saying you think it’s not him, but the perp is deliberately framing Vargas and Campbell?”

I smiled. “That would take some doing. But what I am saying is that it fits with the pattern of evidence he always leaves. And then there’s the white Ford. Everything fits except one piece. I can’t shake the feeling he is still playing us.”