Airtight (9 page)

“Deb, I’m about to show you something that I need your help on. But in the process I’m going to be putting you in a difficult position, because you cannot tell anyone about it.”

“It’s business?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Does the Captain know about it?”

“He officially knows nothing.”

She smiled. “His favorite official posture. Let’s have a look, Luke.”

I showed her the e-mail, and she took her time reading it. “I assume you don’t want to answer any questions,” she said when she was finished.

“Correct.”

“Luke, the person that e-mailed you can find out the IP address himself, as long as he has Internet access.”

I hadn’t known that, but in any event it didn’t solve the problem. “No good,” I said. “His e-mails might be being read.”

She nodded. “OK. Give me your e-mail password.”

I did so, and she said, “I’ll call you as soon as I have the address.”

I left Deb’s office and went back to my own. By that point logic had overtaken optimism, for a number of reasons. For one, there seemed no possible way that Chris Gallagher had made a mistake in allowing Bryan to have the ability to e-mail. He had to have been completely confident that Bryan would not be able to aid in his rescue.

There was also a very significant possibility that it wasn’t Bryan e-mailing at all, but rather Gallagher using his account. He could be hoping to gain access to information in that manner. I would have to come up with a way to test that theory, and learn if it was really Bryan I was communicating with.

Even if it was Bryan, I had to assume that Gallagher had a way to monitor the account, and read our correspondence.

We still had a lot to learn about Chris Gallagher, but I suspected that we were going to learn he was smart, not the type to have made such a significant mistake. At the very least, he had to believe that he could not be hurt by Bryan being in contact with us, and more likely he saw it as a positive for himself.

As with our investigation, I would play it out the way Gallagher set it up, at least for the moment. I had no other choice. But first I had to answer Bryan.

Bryan … I spoke to Gallagher, and I’m working to get you released. Who was your favorite baseball player growing up?

Jonathon Stengel was a combination idealist/realist.

Certainly the prospect of a financially successful career influenced his decision to go to law school, but that wasn’t all it was about for him. He also respected the justice system, and thought he could do good and worthwhile work within it.

That was a significant factor in his decision, after graduating from NYU Law, not to head for the financial security of a large firm. Instead he was awarded a position as a clerk on the United States Court of Appeals, working for Judge Susan Dembeck.

And the time he spent there was all he had hoped it would be, and more. He got to work with brilliant people, on important matters, all the while getting a look at the intimate workings of the system. He decided he would stay for only a year, leaving when Judge Dembeck left, but felt and hoped that he would someday be back, with clerks of his own.

But Stengel also had a need to earn money, and a clerk’s pay was not going to get it done. Which was why he was susceptible to an approach from a fellow NYU alum, Edward Holland, the Mayor of Brayton, New York.

No money would change hands, but Stengel would supply information to Holland, who was arguing the fracking case before the court. Stengel rationalized it with the knowledge that it was not information that would give Holland an unfair advantage; all it would do was provide a “heads-up” for Holland. Advance information would then allow him to position things politically, since his audience was the electorate.

In return, Holland would use some of his significant connections in both the legal and political communities to aid Stengel in his career path.

A simple transaction with no losers, only winners.

To this point, there had been little for Stengel to provide, but now he finally had something. He did not want to make the call from home, and he certainly couldn’t do it from the court, so he found a rare pay phone on the street.

Holland answered on his home number, and immediately recognized Stengel’s voice. “What have you got?” he asked.

“Nothing good, but I thought you should know,” Stengel said.

“She’s staying on?”

“Yes, and she’s the deciding vote.”

Both men knew what that meant. The only chance Holland had to win the case on behalf of Brayton was for Dembeck to leave the court and be replaced by Brennan. Once Brennan was murdered, Dembeck’s deciding to leave anyway would have left the court deadlocked.

But the die was cast; Dembeck was staying, and Holland was backing a losing horse.

“I’m sorry,” Stengel said.

“Yeah. Me too.”

I never got to ask Steven Gallagher if he had an alibi.

My shooting him three times in the chest effectively derailed prospects for an in-depth interrogation.

What would otherwise have taken place was my asking him where he was at the time of the Brennan murder. He could have said that he was home, or at a bar, or performing
La Traviata
at the Met. Whatever he said, I’d then be able to check it out, with the remote potential to exonerate him, or the far more likely potential to implicate him by proving he had lied.

But all of that never happened, and with him in a drawer at the coroner’s office it wasn’t about to. So part of our investigation had to include trying to discover where Steven was at the time of the murder. The fact that we already knew he was in Judge Brennan’s garage swinging a knife was a complicating factor, but one that we had to overlook.

Emmit’s role was to sift through the investigative information coming in, alerting me to things I should personally follow up on. Unfortunately, we were learning that Steven was a young man who had pretty much cut himself off from the world, once he descended into his drug use.

A notable exception to that seemed to be Laura Schmitz. She was said to have been Steven’s girlfriend, though that relationship had apparently ended quite a while before his death. Steven’s phone records showed calls from Ms. Schmitz with some frequency, calls that continued pretty much until the time I shot him. So she was someone we needed to talk to.

Laura worked as a waitress at the Plaza Diner in Fort Lee. Emmit and I stopped at the cash register in the front, where the manager was handling the register. When I flashed my badge and told him we needed to talk to Laura, he pointed to a woman behind the counter.

“Laura, these guys are here to see you.”

She looked up, saw us, and quickly left the counter area, through an open door to the back. Emmit and I took off in pursuit.

It wasn’t a long pursuit. Laura was standing in a corridor, adjacent to the kitchen, staring at the floor and looking angry.

“You son of a bitch,” she said to me when we reached her. “You son of a bitch.”

“I’m sorry, Laura. I know Steven was your friend.”

“He was a beautiful person. And you shot him like an animal.”

“It was not something I wanted to happen,” I said.

She shook her head sadly. “You and me both.”

“We just have to ask you a few questions.”

“I’ve got nothing to say to you.”

“Laura, don’t make this harder than it has to be. If you won’t answer the questions here, then you’ll have to go down to the station with us. You could be there a very long time.”

She seemed to consider this, but didn’t say anything. I took it as an invitation to continue. There was an open office off the corridor, and I suggested we go in there. She didn’t answer, but went into the office, and Emmit and I followed.

“Laura, do you know where Steven was on Friday night, just before midnight?”

“He was home.”

“You saw him there?” I asked.

“No, but I spoke to him on the phone at about seven o’clock.”

“What did he say?”

“I don’t know,” she said.

“You don’t remember?”

“He wasn’t making much sense,” she said, then added grudgingly, “He was using.”

“Did he say what he was planning to do later that night?” Emmit asked.

She frowned at the question, as if she considered it stupid. “He wasn’t planning anything. When he got like that, he didn’t go out. He stayed in his apartment and wasted his life.” Then she looked at me. “Until you ended it.”

“But you can’t say for sure that he stayed home that night?”

She wouldn’t give in. “I’m sure.”

“Did he sound angry?”

“The only person Steven Gallagher was ever angry at was himself,” she said.

“Can you give us the names of some of his other friends? Maybe people who saw him or spoke to him that night?”

“I was his only friend, besides his brother. And I wasn’t there for him.”

“Do you know where his brother is?” I asked.

“No.”

“Have you seen him in the last couple of days?”

She nodded. “The night before last, but I haven’t seen him since.”

I asked if she had an address for him, but she said that she didn’t, and I believed her. Then I asked her if she had anything else to say.

She did.

“The idea that Steven Gallagher found out where that judge lived, that he even remembered the judge’s name, is ridiculous. The idea that he went to his house that night is even dumber. The idea that he killed him is beyond stupid. And the fact that you murdered Steven Gallagher means you are going to rot in hell.”

As interrogations go, that one was not great.

Bryan Somers couldn’t wait three hours to check e-mail.

He made it to two hours and fifteen minutes, and turned on the computer, simultaneously vowing to himself to wait the full three hours next time. This was extra important, he said, because it would reveal whether Luke was getting the messages.

When the machine powered on, the first thing he looked at was the percentage of power remaining, displayed in an icon near the top. It said “96%,” which pleased Bryan. He had been afraid that the simple acts of turning the machine on and putting it to sleep might have caused a more precipitous drop. If he was disciplined about using it, the computer would last longer than he would.

The e-mail from Luke was incredibly relieving for Bryan. While the situation with Julie had caused him to question how well he knew his brother at all, Bryan had no doubt that he was a terrific cop. If anyone could find him, it was Luke. Whether anyone could find him was an open question.

He rushed to respond; not knowing whether Luke would answer, or what he would say, had made it impossible for Bryan to write out his message in advance.

He understood the question about his favorite ballplayer growing up. Luke had to make certain he wasn’t communicating with Chris Gallagher, though Bryan knew Luke would be aware that Gallagher could easily be monitoring the e-mails.

Gary Carter. Keith Hernandez. Ron Darling. Take your pick. Lucas, even though Gallagher might be reading these e-mails, keep me as updated as you can. I’m scared and running out of time.

I don’t think Gallagher was making empty threats.

Bryan was a Mets fanatic growing up, and he knew that Luke would view the list of ballplayers as evidence that it was really Bryan conducting the correspondence.

Very familiar with computers, Bryan next typed in a website that would let him find out his own IP address. He was sure that Luke was already trying to do the same, but he could do it more easily.

Except that he couldn’t. Much to his disappointment, he discovered that he did not have access to the web at all, simply to the e-mail account. For whatever reason, Chris had wanted him to be able to communicate with Luke and the outside world but not be able to browse sites. The disconnect from Internet access would substantially limit his ability to help Luke find him, but there was no way for him to override it.

He still had television as a way to learn what was happening outside, but his situation had not hit the news.

So there was nothing to do but wait for another e-mail from Luke. He assumed that Luke had not brought in the FBI, or other authorities, or it would have made it into the media. So Luke was his contact with civilization, and his only hope to rejoin it.

Bryan decided that he would write out questions for Luke for his next e-mail, though Luke would have to be discreet in answering them, since Gallagher was probably reading them.

He might also eventually write out an e-mail to send to Julie, but first he would have to sort through his feelings about her. With no parents, and no children, Luke and Julie were all he had in the world, and they had betrayed him.

It made Bryan feel very alone, and the worst part was that he knew it was not just a feeling.

He really was alone.

One hundred and sixty-eight hours.

That’s how I thought about the seven days that Bryan had been given. Somehow thinking about it in those terms made me press that much harder. But in the back of my mind, in the front of my mind, was the knowledge that I was wasting my time. I was not going to be able to prove that a guilty man was innocent.

Unless I lied.

Perhaps I could describe progress to Chris Gallagher that wasn’t real but would seem to exonerate his brother. I certainly had no moral qualms about doing so, but it would really have to be convincing.

I would need to fake some evidence, and come up with someone I could hold up as the real killer. It would take some creative thinking, but if I wasn’t making progress in the investigation, it would be a fallback position I would turn to.

So for the moment, I had to focus on the real-life investigation, and I was heading back to the office to get updated by Emmit. I turned on the radio, and they were still talking about the Brennan murder. One of his former basketball teammates was reflecting on his life, and the fact that he was a winner in everything he did.