The Guise of Another (6 page)

Alexander considered the problem. There would be metadata lurking in the shadows of the hard drive, and he would need the forensics guys to uncover that. But to leave the computer alone with Ianna while he sought a search warrant—she could destroy a lot of information if she tried. If she truly had concerns about people seeing her private pictures, he could work around that.

He said, “You could consent to let me look at it—just me—and no other cops or forensic guys. If you let me look at the hard drive, I promise I won't take it to Forensics without coming back to give you a heads-up. And I promise I won't go into any picture files that might be personal. You have my word.”

“And you'll let me know what you find? You'll tell me who he really was?”

“Well, technically, you're a witness and—”

“And technically you don't have a search warrant. I'll wash your back and you can wash mine.”

“You mean scratch.”

“That works too,” she smiled.

He'd expected a grieving mess of a woman barely able to function—not this. Ianna Markova radiated a clever mix of high-end savvy and country charm. She struck Alexander as the kind of woman who could sum up the competing angles of any game and know where best to place her bets. She would have made a great undercover cop, he
thought. “I guess you have a right to know who you've been with all these years,” he said.

Ianna stood, led Alexander to the study, and turned on the computer. As the screen flashed through the wakeup sequence, Ianna wrote on a piece of paper. “Here are the passwords that I know about. I'm not sure if there are any others.”

“He gave you his passwords?”

“Some,” she shrugged. “I…acquired some others.” The curiosity must have shown on Alexander's face because she continued. “A girl's got to take care of herself, doesn't she?”

Alexander smiled and looked at two telephone numbers she had written on the bottom of the paper. “And what are these?”

“My home number and cell, so you can keep me updated.” Then Ianna continued in a voice that held a hint of mischievousness. “And if you come across any pictures that you find…interesting, it's okay if you take a little peek.”

Max Rupert sat at a table in Delancy's Pub and waited for Alexander to arrive. Max had sent his brother a text message to join him there for a beer, and he made the invitation benign—just a chat after work—so that Alexander would show up. He chose Delancy's Pub because it was close to City Hall and had a certain leave-me-alone feel to it.

As he waited, Max picked at the label on a bottle of beer, not sure how he would broach the true purpose for their meeting. He had spent his lunch hour that day chatting with Reed Osgood, his former partner from Homicide, who now chased bad guys for the FBI. After bribing Reed with a lunch of steak and eggs, Reed passed on a tidbit about the Task Force investigation. Reed didn't work the case himself, but the piece of information came from a credible source inside the investigation, and Max trusted Reed.

A little after 6 p.m., Alexander walked into Delancy's, with a purposeful stride that Max hadn't seen in months. He plopped down at the table with Max and immediately hijacked the conversation. “I've got a case I want to run past you.”

“Well, hi to you too. You want to maybe order a beer first?”

Alexander waved at a waitress walking by two tables away and hollered, “Grain Belt.” The girl nodded, and he picked up where he left off. “Right now it's an identity-theft case, but I got a feeling it's a lot more.”

Alexander launched into an explanation of the Putnam case, starting with the car accident and ending with his conversation with Ianna Markova. As Alexander spoke, Max sat silently across the table from him and sipped at his beer.

“What do you know of his life in New York before he disappeared?”

“He grew up in Brooklyn Heights, graduated with decent grades in high school, despite losing both his parents in a car accident. He was about to enter his senior year at Pace University.”

“I get the feeling that you think James is dead?”

“If it quacks like a duck,” Alexander said. “I don't see any other logical conclusion, do you?”

“Sounds like a duck to me. So who killed him, where, and why?”

“That's what I'm working on. I haven't found any evidence that the real James Putnam ever left New York. He sent a letter to his brother in October of that year, saying he was leaving the city because 9/11 freaked him out, but after that—nothing.”

“Did you look at the handwriting and the signature on that last letter?”

“The letter was typed, but the signature looks authentic. It's hard to tell because I don't have a proper handwriting exemplar—just a few old letters.”

“So, what's next?”

“Well, the way I see it, someone should probably do some digging around in Brooklyn. I don't think I'm going to find anything more here in Minnesota—at least nothing that will lead me to the real James Putnam. I want to go to New York. If I look around his old neighborhood, maybe…I don't know…something might open up.”

“Seems reasonable to me. Have you talked to Commander Tiller about it?”

“Not yet.” Alexander circled the heel of his beer bottle on the tabletop. “I've played that conversation in my head a few times, and it never comes out good.”

“It's nothing more than going to the next step. Why should Tiller have a problem with that?”

Alexander looked at Max with a sideways glare. “You're kidding, right? If Tiller had his way, I wouldn't be wearing a badge right now. I'd be on leave with the rest of them. I mean one year ago Tiller would have ordered me to go to New York, but now…I'm getting so tired of this shit.”

“You just have to wait until things blow over.”

“But I didn't do anything wrong.”

Max tucked his shoulders up under his ears. Alexander had just opened the door to the conversation Max wanted to have, and now he hesitated before walking through it.

“What?” Alexander said.

Max took a sip of beer as he organized his thoughts and then said, “How close were you with Detective Rivas?”

“Why do you ask?”

“I have my reasons. How close were you?”

“You know we were partners on the Task Force. What about it?”

“When's the last time you talked to him?”

Alexander narrowed his eyes and tilted his head like a chess player questioning his opponent's move. “I talked to him the day before they searched our houses. We went home at the end of our shift—as normal as can be—said see you later and went home. The next day, the Feds came busting in with a search warrant and…well you know the rest.”

“And they searched Rivas's place before they came to your house.”

“You'll have to ask them. What's with the interrogation?”

“I just want to clarify something, that's all. Consider this preparation for your grand-jury testimony. So they searched Rivas's place and found a stolen car in his garage—”

“You mean a forfeited car,” Alexander said.

“The Feds aren't going to split hairs, Alexander. Rivas took that car off a drug dealer. Had he locked it up in impound and filed the paperwork for a forfeiture, then, yeah, it's not stolen. But if he keeps it, they'll consider that stolen.”

“That's the point. When they searched Rivas's place, they found a shitload of stuff: TVs, guns, cash. When they searched my house, they found nothing. That's because there wasn't anything stolen at my house.”

“So you didn't talk to him the day he got raided?”

“That's what I said.”

“Were you surprised when the FBI showed up on your doorstep
with a search warrant?” The words dropped hard and cold and put a chill between the brothers.

“What are you getting at?”

“You heard me,” Max said “Were you surprised to see them?”

“Hell yeah I was. What'd you think?” Alexander squirmed in his seat and paused to take a swig of beer. “I'm minding my own business when all of a sudden all these FBI agents come flying up my driveway. I thought I was under attack.”

“What about the phone call from Rivas?”

Alexander looked into Max's eyes as though he were trying to read the fine print. Max stared back with steel in his eyes. “Who told you?” Alexander said.

“So Rivas did call you.”

“Yeah, but—”

“Rivas called you while they were searching his house. The FBI has his phone records, Alexander. They know that he made that call to you. What did Rivas tell you?”

Alexander rubbed the lines on his forehead and said, “Rivas just wanted to warn me…so that I could get Desi out of the house. Rivas heard one of them on the radio saying that another team was on their way to my house. He only called me so that I could spare Desi.”

“But you see what it looks like, don't you? They're going to say you didn't have any property at your house because Rivas tipped you off. Christ, Alexander! You know how this works. You've been trained on these interrogation techniques. They'll lead you through your story then start to disassemble it in reverse. They'll give you bits and pieces and let you tangle yourself up trying to explain. They'll get you to tell a dozen little lies about things that don't seem important, but in the end it'll destroy your credibility. No jury will believe you.”

“I won't be lying because I didn't do anything wrong. If I'd been stealing stuff like Rivas was, I couldn't have cleaned house in the ten minutes between his call and the feds showing up.”

“They don't need to get you for stealing. They could be setting you up for perjury. You just told me that you didn't talk to Rivas since the
day before he was arrested. That was a lie. If I can trip you up this easily, what do you think a good prosecutor will do to you?”

Alexander gripped his beer bottle like it was a chicken that needed strangling. His eyes narrowed, staring at the center of the table. Lines creased the frame of his jaw and his forehead. “If all they have against me is a phone call, I should be done with that grand jury by noon.”

“We don't know if that is all they have. You don't know what—”

“That's just it Max. I do know. I know that they have nothing on me because I didn't take anything. Every single item I seized in my arrests went to the evidence room and got logged in. I'm not Rivas. I never took forfeited property home. They can pore over my reports until hell freezes over. They're not going to find anything because there's nothing to find. You hear me?”

“Whoa, Festus. I'm on your side, remember?”

“Sometimes I wonder.”

“Look, I'm going to be straight with you. The folks investigating this thing seem to think that Rivas's phone call to you is important. You tell me it's nothing…then, fine. It's nothing. I bring it up because I'm trying to help you out.”

“You want to help me out? You can help me get to New York.”

“So put in for the travel voucher. It's the logical next step in the case.”

Now it was Alexander's turn to pick at the label on his beer. “I don't think I have the clout to get a travel voucher right now. If I go to Tiller with this Putnam case, he'll pull it and give it to someone else. Maybe he'll say it's a homicide case now and not fraud.”

“It's not a homicide if you haven't got a body. No one knows if the real Putnam is alive or dead.”

“Yeah, but he'll say that identity theft is not a big-enough deal to justify a trip to New York. He'll say we should get New York cops to look into it.”

Max took a drink of his beer and pondered Alexander's argument. He had a point. If this were a murder case, Tiller would send a homicide detective—or have a New York investigator take it up. If this were simply identity theft, why send a fraud investigator all the way to New York,
especially one who stood under a cloud of suspicion. “This might turn out to be homicide,” Max said. “But as we sit here, all we have is identity theft. When you think about it, how much priority will New York give an identity-theft case from Minnesota? We approach Tiller with the argument that if you don't go, the case might fall through the cracks.”

“I know that there's something going on here, Max. If I can get to New York, I'll turn over every rock until I figure out what happened to Putnam.”

Max nodded his head as the last part of the argument gelled. “I got some clout with Tiller,” Max said. “He owes me a favor or two from the old days—before he got sober. I'll pull some strings and get you to New York.”

“You get me to New York, and I'll find James Putnam—dead or alive.”

Night had fallen by the time Alexander walked into his house that evening. Desi was already in bed, propped up with pillows, a laptop on her thighs. Alexander leaned against the doorjamb at the entrance to the spare bedroom. “How was your day?” he asked.

She looked up from her computer for only a second and said, “Same old, same old.” No flicker of affection, and no hint of a guilty conscience. Alexander felt the air grow thick and cold around him. A knot twisted in the pit of his stomach. He pursed his lips and nodded his head slowly. She had answered the way he expected her to answer—the way she had been answering his entreaties for three months.

He put his hand into his pocket and twisted the tie clip in his fingers. He started to pull it out, but stopped. He envisioned her coming up with a rift of plausible stories to explain away what he believed. Confronting her now, before he had irrefutable evidence, ran against his training. Springing the snare too early will only scare the prey into hiding. He decided to tack around the subject for now.

“I might be going to New York,” he said.

Desi took her eyes off her laptop and looked at him. “You're doing what?”

“I have a case that needs some follow-up in New York City.”

“When?” Her question conveyed no discernible interest.

“If I can swing the approval, probably in the next couple days. I'd love it if you went with me.”

She looked away, not like a woman contemplating an answer, but like a woman who knew the answer but stumbled on whether or not to say it. “Alexander, I have a million things going on at the office. I can't just up and leave like you. Why didn't you say something about this sooner?”

“I didn't know about it sooner. It just came up today.”

There had been a time, and not all that long ago, when she would have pulled him into the bed and screwed his brains out—all the while talking about the crazy time they would have in New York City. That part of their lives had succumbed to a death that Alexander didn't see coming until long after it breathed its final breath.

“How long will you be gone?”

Alexander sighed. “I don't know…two, maybe three days. I could postpone it a few days and we could go this weekend.”

“No. Don't postpone anything on my account. I really can't get away right now.”

Desi returned to her computer and started clicking at the keyboard. Alexander waited for her to say something, and when she didn't, he started to turn but paused. The image of the stranger with his arm around Desi froze him, and he turned back to her. “Desi, I know these past few months have been hard on us. But that's why we need to go away together.”

“How will that change anything?” she said. “When we come back you'll still be who you are.”

Her words cut him deeper than he thought they could. He tried to say something, but nothing came out. His expression must have conveyed the depth of the wound because Desi began to backtrack.

“I didn't mean it the way it came out. But with the investigation and the articles in the newspapers, and everyone talking…that's not going to change by us going to New York. That'll all still be here, waiting for us when we get back.”

“We could at least escape it for a couple days.”

“There's no escape. It's with me every minute of every day. I walk down the street, and I wonder if people are talking about me. I can barely bring myself to walk into the office every day. You have no idea how hard this has been for me.”

“For you? I'm the one going before the grand jury. How is this suddenly about you?”

“You know what I mean. I just think a couple days apart might be a good idea.”

Alexander, again, found himself without words. Had she been thinking about being apart from him before he said anything? How else could she come to that opinion so quickly? He thought back to their wedding day and the way she cried as she said her vows. How had they gotten from there to here?

“For better or for worse,” Alexander mumbled.

“That's not what this is about.”

“Then what's it about?”

“I've never been in a situation like this before,” she said. “This is all new to me. I need some time to process things. I need time to know what to think.”

Alexander didn't say anything. He wanted to say that it had been three months. For God's sake, how much time did she need? He wanted to ask her how the man in the nice suit fit into her plan to process things. But he didn't speak his mind. Instead, he simply said, “I understand.”

Alexander walked out to the kitchen just to get away from her. There, he noticed Desi's purse on a nearby countertop. He stepped over to her purse and peeked inside. Her phone lay on top of a jumble of personal grooming items. He slipped two fingers into the purse and eased the phone out.

He could hear Desi tapping away on her laptop. He listened carefully for any change in the patter of her typing as he woke up Desi's phone. He accessed her call log and wrote down every phone number that Desi had called or received a call from over the last twenty-four hours. He turned the phone off and put it back in the purse just as he found it.

Then he opened up his laptop in the living room and logged in to their joint cell-phone account. He pulled up the call information and compared the numbers online to the numbers he had copied from her phone. The first two calls matched, but then he found a number that appeared on the online account that had been deleted from her phone. As he read further, he found the same number deleted three more times. Alexander didn't know the name of the man in the nice suit, but he was willing to bet that he now had the man's phone number. He wrote the number down and closed his computer.