In Dog We Trust (Golden Retriever Mysteries) (33 page)

“Can you be at Gail’s café at six?” Rick asked. “Tony Rinaldi wants to talk to both of us.”

“That’s certainly better than the interrogation room at the Leighville Station,” I said, but Rick had already hung up.

I didn’t like the idea of putting aside this new work so soon after I’d gotten it, but I figured I could get back to work after our meeting. I hurried Rochester through his evening walk, tugging him past any number of interesting smells in the interest of getting liquid and solid results. As soon as I scooped the poop, we were on our way back home, and shortly afterward I was out the door.

It was a beautiful spring evening, and we’d switched out of Daylight Savings Time so the sun was positioned just over the horizon, bathing the canal in a warm, golden light. Wildflowers had sprung up everywhere, and I passed half a dozen joggers on Ferry Road.

I got to The Chocolate Ear just at six, and found Tony Rinaldi already there, sipping a cappuccino and talking on his cell phone. He’d shucked the tie I saw sticking out of his sports jacket, but he still looked professional and focused. By the time I had a coffee of my own, he was finished with his call.

“You’ll be happy to know that I got the ballistics results,” he said. “You’re in the clear.”

“What does that mean, exactly?” I asked.

Rick wasn’t there yet, so we had a couple of minutes to kill, and I guess the guy decided to humor me.

“When a bullet is shot through the barrel of a gun, it gets marks on it,” he said. “Initially, all guns of the same model from the same manufacturer will produce similar marks. But the older a gun gets, and the more bullets that travel through its barrel, the more distinctive the marks become.”

“OK,” I said.

“The gun that was used in these three homicides is a few years old, and it’s been shot a number of times, so it has had time to develop a particular ‘signature.’ In addition, Glocks leave a distinctive image on the cartridge case.”

He took a sip of his cappuccino. “Once a bullet strikes a target, the impact deforms it,” he continued. “But in contrast to bullets, cartridge cases do not strike a target and thus are not deformed by impact. Therefore, case imaging is much better than bullet imaging at linking two cases.”

“Rochester found a shell case at the place where Caroline was shot,” I said. “Did you find any cases around Melissa or Menno?”

He nodded. “The male victim was shot elsewhere and his body was brought to the site, but we found two casings from shells fired at the second victim. I sent all three casings to Doylestown for further analysis.”

Doylestown is the county seat. I knew from Rick that the Bucks County Sheriff’s Office had access to more sophisticated equipment than the individual municipalities.

“The examiner there did a manual microscopic evaluation, and she determined that all three bullets were fired from the same gun,” he said. “Over the last decade the
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has built a database of case markings, and the ballistics expert in Doylestown ran our cases through it.
They are a close match to cases recovered from a home invasion case in Hamilton Township.”

Hamilton was a nice suburb on the north side of Trenton. Rick came in then, nodded at both of us, and walked up to the counter where he ordered his own coffee from Gail, who was clearly trying not to listen too closely to what Tony Rinaldi was telling me. He looked like he’d had a long day; the tail of his white shirt had come out of his khakis, and one pant leg was stuck into his desert boot.

“The examiner warned me that it’s all a subjective judgment,” Tony continued, “and we can only be sure the same weapon was used if we find the weapon. But it does seem to let you off the hook. The signature on your gun is very different—much cleaner.”  He paused. “Rick’s already told you I can’t give the gun back to you, hasn’t he?”

I nodded. “I understand.”

“What?” Rick asked, coming to sit down between us.

Tony ran quickly through the ballistics results with him, then said, “Did I tell you we found the girl’s cell phone in her pocket?”

Rick shook his head. “Anything interesting there?”

“Last call was a text message, from the male victim, asking her to meet him in the woods.”

“But he was killed somewhere else,” Rick said.

Tony nodded. “At this point we’re assuming the killer used the boy’s phone to text the girl and draw her out to the woods.”

“When I was a student, people used to meet up out there for all kinds of reasons,” I said. “Sex, drugs.”

“And rock and roll?” Rick asked.

“Maybe. If they did have an accomplice, they might have used the woods as a convenient meeting spot. Melissa lived in Birthday House, practically next door. So she probably wouldn’t have questioned a meeting there.” I looked at Tony. “I don’t suppose she called Strings Livorno at all?”

He shook his head. “The only calls are either to her parents, her roommate, or the male victim.”

“Did you find Menno’s phone?”

He shook his head. “If the killer used it to text the girl it’s probably gone.”

“But you have his phone number, right? So you can get his cell phone records? Maybe the killer called or texted him first, to get him to wherever he was killed.”

“Already on it, pal. I am an experienced detective.”

“Yeah, sorry. Dealing with Rick so much I feel I need to ask all the questions.” I looked over at him and smirked. He mouthed “asshole” back at me.

I asked, “So if you’re on top of everything, why are we meeting here?”

A harried young mom came in, trailing a crying kid of about five or six. We sat there, listening to the French reggae coming through the speakers, while she negotiated with the kid over chocolate chip cookies.

As she walked out the door, the kid munching on a cookie that I was sure was going to spoil his dinner, Tony said, “You pointed me toward Jeremy Eisenberg. Apparently the boy thinks highly of you.”

“That’s nice to hear.” But I could have figured that out from my course evaluation forms, I wanted to add. I didn’t need to hear it from a homicide detective.

“I had several calls back and forth to New York today,” Tony continued. “The boy’s father is some big shot Wall Street executive, and his mother’s the nervous type. They’re very concerned about the effect on Jeremy’s psyche of being interviewed by a police officer.”

He clearly thought that Jeremy’s parents were coddling him, but that’s life for most of the students at Eastern. “So I asked them if having one of Jeremy’s professors along would make it easier for him, and they agreed.” He looked at me. “I’ve got to stay close to the station because I’m waiting for the coroner’s report, and for a few other feelers I put out to come through. I need you and Rick to go up to New York and speak to Jeremy, see if he has anything to add.”

I nodded. “Sure. When?”

“Tomorrow?”

Shit. I had all that work to do for my new client, work I had promised I would finish very fast. I looked over at Rick. He shrugged. “OK.” And before I could say anything he said, “Don’t worry, I’ll call Santos and let him know.”

I thought about asking if the trip could wait a few days, until after I’d made a good impression on this new client, but I already knew the answer I’d get. I figured I’d have to work late that night to make up for the time I’d be losing the next day.

“We have any idea what this guy might be able to provide?” Rick asked Tony.

“I saw him with Menno and Melissa once, outside of class,” I said. “If he was friendly with them, maybe they gave him some hint about what was going on.”

There was something rolling around in my head, and while Rick and Tony traded some additional information I tried to focus on it. “Wall Street,” I finally said.

They both looked at me. “If Jeremy’s father works on Wall Street, he probably knows some stuff about money,” I said. “Making him a good guy for Melissa and Menno to ask for advice.”

I nearly pulled an all-nighter working on the hospital’s manual, not getting to sleep until nearly four. My alarm went off at six-thirty, and I had Rochester fed and walked by the time Rick picked me up and we drove to the Levittown train station to catch the New York-bound train. It was the first time I’d been that way since returning to Bucks County, and I realized again how lucky I’d been to grow up in Stewart’s Crossing, rather than in the terrible uniformity of Levittown. A huge planned community built in the 50s to provide cheap housing for returning vets, it sat on the other side of the railroad tracks.

When I was growing up in Stewart’s Crossing, I had lots of friends who lived in the forty-one developments which made up Levittown, from Appletree Hollow to Yellowood. Each street in each development began with the same letter—so you knew, for example, that Quaint, Quail & Quiet were all streets in Quincy Hollow. But there were two B’s – Birch Valley and Blue Ridge, 2 G’s—Goldenridge and Greenbrook, and three D’s – Dogwood Hollow, Deep Dale East and Deep Dale West. If someone lived on Crown, Conifer or Candle, you didn’t know if they were in Cobalt Ridge or Crabtree Hollow, which kind of defeated the whole naming plan, as far as I was concerned.

It was a Thursday, and the Levittown station was filled with commuters. If I closed my eyes and wished hard I could pretend Rick and I were just two friends heading into the city for the day, not on our way to interrogate some terrified college kid about the murders of two of his friends.

We bought our tickets, then descended to the track level. I saw one of my neighbors at River Bend and nodded hello. I’m not a nosy guy, but I’d have to say I was observant. I knew that the man in the corner house had a male friend who slept over sometimes, that the people two houses down had a sick child who was in and out of the hospital, that Mona Tsouris, the elderly lady across the street, was visited during the summer for months on end by her sister Dinah.

I recognized by sight or license plate the cars of maids, in-laws and poker buddies. Just from walking regularly, I knew most of my neighbors by face, and many by name. I added the fact that this neighbor was a commuter to the store of what I knew about him—that he drove a pickup truck, but wore a suit to work, that he had two adopted Chinese daughters.

There was always so much you could learn about a person if you were observant. Yet my powers had failed when it came to Melissa and Menno; I’d had them in class for a whole semester and never suspected what they were up to.

The train arrived, and Rick and I shuffled together with the crowd, eventually boarding the train and finding a pair of seats facing forward.

“You know anything about this kid?” Rick asked, as the train sped north.

“Nothing much,” I said. “I can tell from the address that his parents have bucks, but we already knew Daddy works on Wall Street. He’s reasonably smart, though I’m sure he could work a lot harder—but then, so could most of my students. He wrote about very ordinary stuff—high school graduation, ecstasy.”

Rick’s eyebrows raised. “Ecstasy?”

“Lots of kids write about it,” I said. “Usually they’re trying to figure out whether it’s good or bad, and their research generally tells them it’s bad. I doubt we’re going to discover he’s a dealer.”

“But you think he was friendly with the two kids?”

I shrugged. “It’s college, you know? You’re friendly with all kinds of people, because they live in your dorm, or they take classes with you, or they just happen to study in the carrel in the library next to yours. Hopefully, one or both of them told him something that will make this trip worthwhile.”

I had brought my laptop with me, and I worked on the risk management manual while Rick made notes on a PDA. The train filled up, and by the time we got to Newark there were men standing in the aisles and it was too noisy to concentrate. I looked around and wondered if I would ever be part of that rat race again, commuting into the city from the suburbs, with a wife and kids. It was what we’d both been planning when Mary and I got married, but God obviously had other plans in mind for us.

We took a cab from Penn Station to the East Sixties, just off First Avenue, where the Eisenbergs lived. We introduced ourselves to the doorman, who called upstairs for Mrs. Eisenberg’s approval.

When she came to the door, we discovered that she was quite a bit younger than expected, very pretty, with a French accent. When she introduced herself, she added that she was Jeremy’s stepmother. “His mother died when Jeremy was twelve,” she said. “Breast cancer. I married his father three years ago.”

“He generally a good kid?” Rick asked as she led us through a foyer bigger than my downstairs, into a huge living room filled with the kind of fancy French furniture I’m always afraid of breaking.

“He’s never been in trouble before.” She looked worried.

“He’s not in trouble now, ma’am,” Rick said. “We just need to ask him some questions about friends of his at Eastern.” He looked around as we sat on heavily gilded sofa. “Will Mr. Eisenberg be joining us?”

“He’s at work,” she said. “Jeremy! Can you come out here, please?”

A moment later Jeremy came shambling out from some distant part of the apartment. His khakis seemed in danger of slipping off his narrow hips, and his T-shirt, which advertised Town and Country Surf Shop, hung loosely on his bony frame. I noticed Rick take in the eyebrow piercing, the dumbbell through the chin, and the multiple balls and hoops stuck through his ears. When Jeremy reached out to shake hands, his t-shirt rode up, and I could see his navel had been pierced as well. Basically, he looked just like he did at Eastern, except that he was barefoot. “Hey, professor,” he said.