The Kills (21 page)

Over and
over again, I played in my mind the words that Judge Moffett had said at the
start of Andrew Tripping's trial:
"Murder. You should have charged the defendant with murder."

He hasn't
killed anyone, I had thought. Not that I could prove.

The
questions I had thrown at Mike on the long ride down to the southernmost
station house on the island of Manhattan, none of which he could answer, were
the things we started with now.

"Do
we have a time of death on this?" I asked, after saying hello to some of
the guys I recognized and had worked with before. No one answered.

"Who's
in charge here?" Mike asked.

We were
out of his territory now, on the turf of the Manhattan South Homicide Squad.
There wasn't a man in the room who took pleasure in being second-guessed by a
colleague from the north, or a prosecutor in a black couture dress and
peau-de-soie shoes with three-inch heels.

"Yo,
Squeeks. You the man?" Mike said, pointing to a guy who was hanging up a
phone on a desk in the rear of the room.

Will
Squeekist had been a detective in Narcotics for five years before a recent
promotion to Homicide. The nickname that Mike had given him when they were in
the academy years earlier had stuck, and fit the small-framed man with a
high-pitched voice.

"Come
on back here. Let's get started," Squeeks called out to us. "Hey,
Alex, how you been?"

"Doing
fine until this news."

"Sit
down," he said, stepping away from his desk chair and turning it over to
me. Space was at a premium in the outdated old squad rooms of most precincts.

"No,
thanks. Stay where you are," I said, refusing the offer.

"I
need to have my back to the guys while I say a couple of things to you. Get
something off my chest. Do me a favor and sit down."

Squeeks
went around the desk so that he could talk directly into my face. "Sorry
about the frigid greeting, Alex. A couple of them have a problem with
this."

"With
what?" What I had thought was empathy was something else altogether.

"We
understand the deceased was a witness of yours. Paige Vallis. That right?"

"Yes.
What's the problem?"

Squeeks
paused. "I mean, they want to know why she didn't have any kind of
protection, any-"

Mike
jumped to my defense. "What are you, nuts? This broad's a complaining
witness in a garden-variety sexual assault case. She was-"

I was
steamed, too. "There's no such thing as a 'garden-variety' rape, Mike. Let
me handle this myself. What do you guys think this is-Hollywood? When's the last
time you know a witness who's been guarded during a trial in Manhattan Supreme
Court? We've got forty felony cases going every day, and witnesses walk in and
out of the place like it's an ordinary office building. This isn't a mob case,
there's no drug cartel connection, Tripping wasn't a gunrunner or a Mafia
kingpin. Who's the asshole who's blaming
me
for this murder?" I stood up. "Let's clear the air about this right
now."

I came
around from behind the desk and started for the group of detectives huddled
between the coffee machine and the door to the lieutenant's office. Mike
grabbed me by the arm and tried to hold me in place, but I shook loose.

"She
feels like shit already, Squeeks," Mike said. "The broad is dead.
What was Coop supposed to do different?"

"Could
have let the Terrorist Task Force know what was going on," he answered.

I stopped
in my tracks and turned back. "What?"

"A
couple of the guys are just saying you could have told the task force your
witness was at risk because of her background," Squeeks said.

"Well,
I'd have to know about it first in order to tell them, wouldn't I? The
defendant claimed a lot of things that turned out not to be true. There's no
middle ground with you guys. I ask you to go to the mats in order to get me
evidence for my cases and you tell me there's no manpower to do it, or that no
one will authorize the overtime. Now you're accusing me of not seeing
conspiracies where I don't believe they exist-like the task force would have
taken this schizophrenic wanna-be spy seriously if I had thought to call them?
That's a load of crap."

"Not
Andrew Tripping. I don't mean him."

"Exactly
who do you mean, Squeeks? I'm running clean out of guesses."

"The
terrorist. The guy she killed down in Virginia."

Mike was
sitting on the edge of the desk. "Who'd she kill?"

"Let's
back up a few steps," I said. "I know she accidentally killed a man,
and I thought she had told me everything I needed to know. You obviously know
more about that incident than I do."

"That's
unusual, Alex. The guys who've worked with you," Squeeks said, cocking his
thumb over his shoulder to point behind him, "they say you know more about
your victims than they know about themselves. Say you don't go to trial until
you've pulled every last ounce of information out of them."

"That's
the truth," Mike said. "Get your hands off your hips, blondie, and
lighten up. That's a good thing."

"They
figure you're aware of all this, Alex."

I raised
both arms in bewilderment and shook my head at Squeeks.

He went
on. "After we found the body, we ran her. Just a name check, not even
fingerprints. That's routine. Never expected to get anything-and bingo-came
back with a homicide arrest down in Fairfax."

"I
know that. I spoke to the DA there myself," I said. "He gave me the
whole file. There was nothing in it about a terrorist."

"Maybe
someone sanitized the file," Mike said. "Can you show them what
you've got, Coop?"

"Drive
me over to my office and I'll get the whole thing. What I thought I had was a
copy of the original court papers. You can see the entire record," I said
to Squeeks.

I picked
up the phone on the desk and dialed Battaglia's home number. "Paul? Sorry
to wake you. I've got some very tough news," I said, telling him about the
murder of Paige Vallis, which would certainly be Sunday morning's headlines in
a few hours.

"And
I need a couple of things from you. Right now, if you can. There's a prosecutor
in Virginia who gave me information on an old case. There's a chance his boss
made him purge some details from it," I said, asking him to place an
emergency call to the district attorney in Fairfax, to grease the wheels to get
the real story.

"One
more thing. Your contact at the CIA? Would you call and ask them for
information on an agent called Harry Strait? He may have something to do with
this."

I paused
and waited for a response. "I know it's the middle of the night, Paul, but
they're not going to give this stuff to anyone else."

Squeeks
was waiting for me to get off the phone. "Why don't you tell me what you
did know about Vallis's case."

Mike
listened as I laid out the facts for both of them.

Paige's
eighty-eight-year-old father had died, of natural causes, at his home in
Virginia. Paige had gone down there to organize the funeral service and arrange
for his personal belongings to be moved or sold.

"The
prosecutor told me it was a part of a pattern, a scam that a burglary team was
operating," I said. "The obituary listed the date and time of the
funeral, as they always do. That's when the burglars check out the address of
the deceased, figure that anyone who knew and loved him would be in church at
the ceremony, and they break into the house because they figure it will be
unattended."

I went
on, "Paige said she came home from the cemetery and went in via the back
door, surprising the burglar. He lunged at her with a knife, they struggled,
and when they fell to the floor, he landed on it."

"Hoist
on his own petard," Mike said.

"Exactly.
The case went to the grand jury, Paige told her story, and if I remember
correctly, the jurors actually stood up and applauded her."

Squeeks
opened his case folder and looked at his notes. "You got the guy's
name?"

"In
my office. I want to say it's something like Nassan. Abraham Nassan."

"Close.
It's Ibrahim."

"What's
your point?" Mike asked.

"That
it's clearly an Arabic name. That Cooper should have known-"

"I'm
telling you that the court papers I have say Abraham. I even have a photograph
of the guy. What should I have known?"

"They
didn't tell you he was part of a cell? An arm of al Qaeda?" Squeeks asked.

"They
told me he was Abie the burglar. Abie the second-story man," I said,
slamming my hand on the desktop. "A rash of funeral-related thefts. Close
this case out, close them all."

"Coop
thought he was one of her boys, not Abie the Arab," Mike said.

I fished
in my evening bag for my set of keys. "Send one of the guys over to Hogan
Place. Here's the key to my office. The folder's in the third cabinet from the
bookcase. Bring the whole goddamn case and look at it for yourself. Why the
hell is any prosecutor going to purge a file to give to me?"

Squeeks
answered me. "The police chief thinks the district attorney in Fairfax had
orders from the feds. There was a major investigation in progress, a follow-up
to the Pentagon plane crash, and the feds were running a pretty tight ship.
They didn't want the public to panic. Figured if one of the terrorists was dead
and the death was justifiable, no need to alarm the good citizens of the
Commonwealth. Still can't believe they didn't tell
you
the truth."

"Well,
start believing it. And let's send out for some coffee. Black for both of us.
We've got lots of other people to talk about," I said.

"You
know what Victor Vallis did for a living?" Squeeks asked.

"Paige's
father? I know he was in the diplomatic corps."

"Posted
in Egypt, actually. Paige testified about that."

Squeeks
gave Chapman a look, again suggesting I should have divined a connection to
some kind of international intrigue, rather than a simple break-and-enter.

"And
he was also posted in France, Senegal, Hong Kong, Lebanon, and Ghana," I
said, ticking off the countries I could remember on my fingers. "Maybe I
should have polled the United Nations on what kind of danger that put Paige
in."

"You
know that he came out of retirement after the Persian Gulf War?"

"Hey,
Squeeks," Chapman said, jabbing the shorter man's chest with his finger.
"If you're such a frigging fountain of knowledge, why didn't you give
blondie a call?"

"'Cause
I just found this stuff out while they got Paige Vallis on ice up at the
morgue."

"Yeah,
well, it's amazing how people start to regurgitate the truth after somebody
winds up dead."

"They
knew Victor Vallis was an expert on Middle Eastern affairs," Squeeks said.
"They paid him to be a CIA consultant, right up to the end. He knew all
the players, what caves they were cribbing in, how the money moved around the
region."

"Was
Paige aware of it?" I asked. "I swear she never mentioned anything
about this to me."

"I
have no idea whether the old man told her he was still involved."

"This
Ibrahim guy get anything from the Vallis house? I mean, was there an accomplice
waiting outside?" Mike asked.

"He
seemed to be there on his own. Chief says there was nothing much in the place
to take, and he must have only got started minutes before the girl came home.
Like Alex says, Mr. Vallis died of natural causes, so that didn't seem to be
related to the break-in, either."

"Can
we talk about the murder, Squeeks?" I asked. "Mike says you wouldn't
even answer his questions when you called. Isn't it time we get some of the
details?"