“I don’t—” he started, then stopped himself. “Look, I can’t be talking to you. You know that, right? I shouldn’t have talked to you before. My department has policies about that, and even on leave—or whatever they’re calling it—I have to follow that. I’m only here as a favor to Mimi. I’ll show her these pictures, and if she has something to say, she’ll call you, okay?”
“So you’re just going to—”
“She’ll call you,” he said more firmly.
I could tell I was shoving him too close to the edge. And furthermore, I realized trying to move him any more was going to be futile. Mike Fusco didn’t
get
pushed around.
“Okay,” I said. “But, look, why don’t you just give me your number? That way, if I get anything else, I can call you and I don’t have to bother Mimi directly? I don’t want to upset her any more than she’s already upset, you know?”
It was, I thought, a reasonable request. And apparently Fusco thought so, too. I held out my pad and pen. He grabbed them, then wrote “Mike Fusco” with a phone number underneath.
For the time being, it seemed like the best I was going to get.
* * *
The rain had slackened but was still coming down hard enough to make the puddles dance as I went back outside. I grabbed my umbrella from where I had left it but didn’t bother opening it. If Fusco didn’t need one, neither did I.
Which just meant I was damp by the time I got back in my Malibu. What
is it
with these tough guys, anyway?
Feeling defeated, I considered consoling myself with an early lunch. A good, wholesome lunch. The kind that would be served on a real plate and, perhaps, even include vegetables and a side salad. Unfortunately, I was in a part of town where the food options were boundless—as long as you were looking for fried chicken. It’s hard to eat healthy in the hood.
I was still considering what to do about this dilemma three minutes later when my phone rang. It was a 609 number, which likely meant state government.
“Carter Ross,” I said.
“Hey, it’s Hilfiker.”
“That was fast. What’s going on?”
“Well, we’re about to have two conversations.”
“Okay.”
“The first is the one we’re having on the record, that you can go ahead and print in that silly newspaper of yours,” he said. “The second is the conversation I always wished people would have with me when I was a reporter, the one where I explain why the first conversation doesn’t make much sense.”
“Oh, this ought to be good,” I said, pulling over to the side of Central Avenue and fishing my notebook out of my pocket.
“Right, so here goes with the first one. You ready?”
“Yeah.”
“The attorney general’s office has determined that there is no need for an independent investigation into the death of Darius Kipps. The attorney general has every confidence that the Newark Police Department and the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office will conduct a thorough investigation and resolve this matter in a satisfactory fashion.”
I scribbled furiously, writing in the self-taught shorthand I had developed over the years. Hilfiker helped by saying it slowly enough—“talking at notebook speed,” is what we call it—so I could get it down verbatim. I waited until he was done and then said, “Really?”
“Really.”
“You got a feather by any chance?”
“No, why?”
“Because you could knock me over with one right now,” I said. “You guys are seriously taking a pass on this? You told your boss about the pictures, right?”
“I did. I even showed them to him.”
“And he knows we’re going to run with this?”
“Yeah, I guess so. I didn’t say that explicitly. But he’s not a dummy. I don’t need to explain to him what mud-mucking journalists like you do for a living.”
“So … okay, I guess let’s have the second conversation now. Because, you’re right, I’m totally perplexed.”
“Okay, well, basically—we’re off the record now—your pastor took the heat off.”
“My
pastor
?”
“Yeah, whatshisname. The megachurch guy. LeRioux.”
“Why would he … that doesn’t make any sense.”
“I don’t know. Maybe he felt like he had gotten all the mileage he could out of this thing and decided he was done.”
“So he gets his face time and he goes home?”
“Something like that,” Hilfiker said.
“That’s cold.”
“Tell me about it. It’s also pretty stupid, frankly.”
“How so?”
“He’s screwing himself out of a payday.”
“I’m not following you.”
Hilfiker sighed. “Haven’t you learned to be a little more cynical by now? Think about it. I’m sure Detective Kipps has a life insurance policy—all cops do, especially Newark cops. Problem is, if his death is ruled a suicide, the policy is no good. That means the Widow Kipps is destitute. On the other hand, if she is suddenly flush with a half million bucks’ worth of insurance company money…”
“Maybe she expresses her piety by giving ten percent of it to the anointed man of God, in loving memory of her dead husband,” I completed.
“There you go.”
“So why would he call off the dogs?”
“I don’t know. I wasn’t part of the phone call. And his honor the attorney general didn’t say. But I’m guessing once he heard LeRioux was dropping it, he thought there was no reason for him to pick it up. You can bet no one in Essex County is going to be clamoring for him to step in.”
“Okay, but let’s leave the politics out of this for a second—”
“This is New Jersey,” Hilfiker said. “You can
never
leave the politics out of it.”
“I know, I know, but…” I began, struggling to put words to my thoughts. I watched a woman in a hijab hurry down the street, carrying two plastic grocery bags, bowing her head to keep her face out of the rain.
“Well, call me naïve, but I thought maybe your boss might just do the right thing here,” I said.
“Who says he’s not?”
“Come on, you saw those pictures.”
“Yeah, but you’re thinking like a reporter. This is a lawyer you’re dealing with. He might have just decided that, legally, it was right to let the locals deal with it. Just because the attorney general is the top law enforcement agent in the state doesn’t mean he has to get involved every time someone disputes a traffic ticket.”
“This is hardly a traffic ticket…”
“You know what I’m saying. Sometimes the AG has to pick and choose, and maybe he figures this one is best left where it is.”
“In other words, the Newarkers made this mess, so let them clean it up.”
“Well, that’s another way to look at it. But yeah. And, remember, Newark makes the mess, but it’s really Essex County that ought to be cleaning it up. That’s how the food chain goes. Sure, it leads up to my guy eventually. But it hits the Essex County prosecutor first.”
“Right, right,” I said.
The hijab woman had rounded the corner, out of sight. I couldn’t think of anything else to ask the attorney general’s spokesman, so I didn’t object when Hilfiker said: “Anyhow, I gotta run. Good luck with it.”
“Thanks. For both conversations,” I said, ending the call and putting my car into Drive at the same time. I pulled a quick U-turn and pointed myself back in the direction of Mimi’s house.
I didn’t know if she’d believe me—what with me being an agent of Satan and all—but she needed to know that her beloved Pastor Al, the man she trusted so implicitly, had simply been exploiting her to get free advertising on the evening news. And now, having used her, he was dropping her and going back to whatever it was he really preferred to be doing.
Like drop-kicking orphans.
* * *
Arriving back at the Kipps household, I got out of the car with my umbrella open this time. I didn’t need any more of that tough guy stuff.
I was about to walk across the street when I happened to glance up at those naked second-story windows. I saw Mimi Kipps—or at least the top half of her—wearing one towel on her body and another on her head, having an animated conversation with someone. And being the naturally curious reporter that I am, I stopped to see who.
She wasn’t looking at the person very often. She was mostly puttering around the room. Making a bed, maybe? On occasion, she would bend over, pick something up, and put it somewhere else, like she was cleaning up toys in a child’s bedroom. She moved with the practiced efficiency of a mom who had done this before, but she also maintained her half of the dialogue the entire time. Her body language suggested she was angry, tense.
I kept watching—yeah, so I’m a voyeur, what’s your point?—but still couldn’t tell who was carrying the other side of the exchange. I moved up the street a little bit, to give myself a different angle. And there, standing with his arms crossed, was Mike Fusco. He was leaning against the wall with his head tilted to one side, giving no hint as to his emotional state.
And it struck me as, well, a little strange that Mimi would be talking with him while she wasn’t dressed. I realize that as a starchy WASP, I tend to be a smidge prudish about such matters. But still. There are a scant number of women in my life who would feel comfortable talking to me while wearing a towel. Half of them I’m related to and the other half I’ve …
Slept with? Could Mimi and Fusco be …
No. I chased the thought from my mind. Or at least I was trying to. And then Mimi made a large, frustrated motion—an “I’ve had it” kind of gesture—and Fusco walked up behind her and started rubbing her shoulders.
She didn’t fight it, just immediately let her body slump, giving in to the massage. Fusco worked on her for about a minute or so while Mimi stood there, giving me the chance to think that, well, maybe they were just really,
really
good friends. There was still some possibility this could be platonic, right? Mimi needed a human touch. Fusco wanted to give her some comfort, and he was probably the kind of guy who’d be better communicating with his actions than his words.
Besides, no woman who had given birth five months earlier—to say nothing of a woman who had just lost her husband—would be trolling for some kind of random hook-up. A guy might. Guys can pretty much turn off their brains and shut out those kinds of petty distractions when it comes to sex. But women are too practical about human relations for that sort of thing. So this was probably just …
I was still trying to work out that line of reasoning when Mimi Kipps blew it right away. She turned into Fusco, wrapped an arm around the back of his head, and pulled him close for a kiss. And it didn’t look like it was their first. Their heads fell into a familiar rhythm. His hands went for her back and butt, and I wondered how much longer the towel was going to stay in place.
Before things shifted to something more suited for late-night cable, Mimi pushed Fusco out of sight—into a back bedroom, perhaps—leaving me to sort out the ramifications of it all.
Fusco and Mimi. Ramifying, as it were.
Yikes.
I’m sure Mimi wasn’t the first widow to take up with her husband’s best friend, but wasn’t this a bit … soon? Don’t they usually wait a month or two—or, heck, at least until the deceased is in the ground—before they …
And then, finally, the lightbulb went on above my head: there was no need to wait because it had already been going on. This wasn’t a new romance. This was an affair. I thought about the first time I saw Mimi with Fusco, how they had been sharing a cup of coffee with such intimacy, how she had draped her hand so casually on his shoulder.
Then I thought about that conversation they had earlier, where Fusco had essentially berated her for giving money to the pastor. I had dismissed it as Fusco taking up his buddy’s battle, never thinking it was possibly his own battle. I had been watching a lover’s spat.
Yeah, Mimi and Fusco had probably been doing this for a while, which meant …
I felt like I needed one of those feathers to knock me over again. Here I was, slamming my brain around, trying to imagine these big, complicated scenarios that led to the death of Darius Kipps. And all along, it had been one of the oldest and simplest of sins. Lust.
Mimi Kipps was just another adulterous wife. Mike Fusco was just another swinging dick. And they both wanted the third wheel out of the way.
I began imagining a new scenario, one that made the pieces fit: Darius learned his quasi-partner was having an affair with his wife, got blisteringly drunk for the first time in a decade, and, while still smashed, angrily confronted Fusco. And sure, Kipps was a big guy. But he was also borderline blacking out, so Fusco was able to subdue him easily.
Maybe that’s when the chair tying came in. I could imagine Fusco tying up Kipps, just so they could talk without Kipps trying to throw punches. Maybe Fusco argued that he and Mimi were in love and that Kipps might as well face the fact that his marriage was over.
But Kipps refused, raved that he was going to get Mimi back no matter what, maybe even threatened to harm her. Whatever it was, it made Fusco realize he had to get rid of Kipps. So Fusco grabbed Kipps’s gun, untied him, pushed him in the shower in the locker room, and,
blam
, game over.
The ballistics would match. And Fusco would have known the water from the shower would destroy or alter key evidence, like gunshot residue or blood spatter. And when other cops heard the gunshot and came to investigate, there’s Fusco, just another cop in the bedlam. No one would have realized he was there all along.
Or heck, maybe it was even more sinister than that. Maybe this was a premeditated act, and Mimi and Fusco had come up with some kind of plan to get rid of Kipps and make it look like suicide. They tied him down, forced him to drink a bunch of booze, then went for the kill.
Either way, it worked. Sure, Mimi had been hell-bent on clearing her husband’s name, trying to convince me and others he never would have committed suicide, even going so far as to have Fusco tell me about the inconsistency with the bourbon (which may have been invented). But all that—as Ben Hilfiker had so cynically pointed out—was just for insurance purposes.
The reaction of the Newark Police Department certainly made sense. The cops were just embarrassed that one of their own had killed himself and wanted the thing to be over with as soon as possible.