Payback in Death, page 23
“Why—other than the alibi that’s going to check out?”
“He’s too kind, and murder would disgrace the daughter he loved.”
“That, plus he’s a rule follower. One more.” Eve hesitated, then pulled out of the loading zone. “I knew this one.”
“The dead cop?”
“Ansel Hobbs. We were at the Academy together. I slept with him once.”
“Oh. Okay. Oh.”
“Nothing major, either side. When we graduated. Sort of a ‘lots of drinks, bang it out, move on’ thing. I didn’t see much of him after that, and less once Feeney took me on in Homicide. I ran into him at the Blue Line right after I made detective. I got this itch.”
Peabody’s eyes widened. “You had sex with him again?”
“No! Not that kind of itch. Something off about him. I didn’t think much about it at the time, but now … According to the files, he’d have already been dirty. A few years later, when he got caught doctoring evidence for a fee, I wasn’t surprised.”
She made a turn, settled on another loading zone.
“In under twenty-four hours, he’d taken himself out. He was engaged to the woman we’re going to talk to.”
“Cela Spaceck,” Peabody remembered from the file. “Thirty-four, single. Licensed therapist.”
“Right. Considering the graduate, lots of drinks, bang it out, you take the lead on this one.”
“Sure, but that doesn’t seem like a conflict.”
“Maybe not. But we keep well inside the lines. This is her place, she works out of it.”
The pretty townhome had a pot of white flowers on the stoop and privacy shades on the windows.
Top-of-the-line security—cams, palm plate, security swipe.
Eve pressed the buzzer.
A human voice answered. “Ms. Spaceck’s offices. May I help you?”
“NYPSD, Lieutenant Dallas, Detective Peabody.”
“Are you serious?”
In answer, Eve held up her badge. The door buzzed, locks thumped free.
Inside, a short hallway with gleaming floors opened into a tasteful, on-the-plush-side living area. Or they’d designed it to resemble one. A woman in a cream-colored suit and a head full of black braids pushed up from a curved-leg desk to hurry across the room.
“Excuse me! I just couldn’t believe—I read both of Nadine Furst’s books.” She shot out a hand to Peabody. “I loved your character’s smart mouth! It’s a pleasure to meet you both.” She pumped Eve’s hand in turn. “How can we help you today?”
“We’d like to speak with Ms. Spaceck.”
“She’s with a patient, but should be finishing up very shortly. Can I offer you anything?”
“We’re good. Have you worked here long?”
“Since Cela—Ms. Spaceck—opened her practice. Three years now. Please, sit down.”
They settled on opposite ends of a peacock-blue sofa. Quiet, soothing watercolors decorated the pearl-gray walls. The air smelled like lemon blossoms twined with lavender.
“I did see the vid, too, and it was excellent. Well, obviously, Oscar winner and all that. But I seriously loved the book. And the follow-up! I was terrified all over again. I mean to say, it brought it all back. Rumor is, Ms. Furst is already writing a third.”
“That’s the rumor,” Eve said, and hoped to leave it at that.
Her hopes would’ve been dashed, but the door across the hall opened.
The man who came out looked about fifty with pale blue eyes that showed signs of recent weeping. He hesitated, looked nervously at Eve and Peabody, then cleared his throat.
“Ms. Spaceck said next week, as usual.”
“We’ll see you then. Have a good rest of your day.”
“I’m going to try.”
He hurried out.
“Give me one minute.”
The receptionist walked to the door, poked her head in. A minute later, she walked back.
“You can go right in. I should tell you Ms. Spaceck only has fifteen minutes before her next appointment.”
“We’ll keep it as brief as possible.”
Eve stepped in to what she’d have called a good-sized parlor. No desk, but two good leather chairs the color of honey and a deep-cushioned copper-toned sofa.
Tables, lamps, a glass-fronted friggie holding water. A mini-AC, plants—thriving. And a woman with mocha-colored skin, hair the color of her chairs cut sharp and blunt to her chin. She stood tall and curvy in a sleeveless black dress and appraised Eve and Peabody with iceberg-blue eyes.
“Lynn’s starstruck.”
“We’re police, Ms. Spaceck,” Peabody said somberly. “Not stars. Thank you for seeing us so quickly.”
“Of course. But if this is about a patient, you’re going to need a warrant. And if you have a warrant, I need to contact my attorney.”
“It’s about Captain Martin Greenleaf.”
The eyes went from haughty to puzzled. “I’m not sure who that is.”
“Captain Greenleaf headed Internal Affairs when Ansel Hobbs self-terminated.”
“Oh.” After a long breath. “Oh. I’m not sure I knew that.”
“Captain Greenleaf was murdered Sunday night.”
“I see. No, actually, I don’t. Sit down, please. I can give you coffee, tea, water, and about fifteen minutes. Why do you want to talk to me about the murder of a man I didn’t know who investigated a man who’s been dead for nearly eight years?”
“We’ll take the seat and the fifteen.” Peabody spoke briskly as Cela went to the friggie, got water for herself. “You and Officer Hobbs were engaged.”
“I was engaged to the man I believed Ansel to be.” Cela took one of the chairs, cracked the tube of water. “Then I learned he’d lied to me, repeatedly, that he’d broken the law he’d sworn to uphold, and made a mockery of my faith in him.”
“Did he speak to you about the investigation, about Captain Greenleaf?”
“He told me he was in trouble, and why. He wanted me to pack up, just pack up everything, my life included, and run with him. We’d dated for nearly a year, had been engaged a few weeks, had just moved in together.”
She sipped the water.
“I can’t tell you if he mentioned that name—I don’t remember. I was stunned, angry, I couldn’t believe what he was telling me. He’d taken bribes, planted evidence, doctored it, altered reports—all for money. He tried to claim the money was to give me the life I wanted, and that was—frankly—bullshit. He said we had to leave the city or he’d be arrested. He’d lose his job, probably go to prison, but he had enough put away to get away, start a new life.
“On lies,” she said. “I refused. I was so angry. I saw everything I’d envisioned my life—our life together—becoming shatter. I said horrible things to him.”
She pressed her lips together, then took a long drink. “Horrible things, and I regret them. In my shock and anger, I offered no support to him. No promises to stand by him, the man I’d said I loved, whatever came. He pleaded, he cried, but I wouldn’t budge. And then I walked out on him. I spent the night with a friend.
“I found him the next morning when I came back for my things, still riding stiff-backed on my high, high horse. I said horrible things, I walked out. And he didn’t run. He took his own life.”
She set the water aside. “It wrecked me. For months I sleepwalked through the day, lay awake at night. Then I decided if I’d known more about myself, about Ansel, if I’d understood more, I might have helped him. So I went back to school, and studied, and got my license. Three years ago, I began seeing people who needed someone to listen, someone to help.”
She breathed deep. “And I actually do understand now why you’re here. You want to know where I was and what I was doing—Sunday night, you said?”
“Between eight and ten P.M.”
“That’s inconvenient,” she murmured. “Sunday I went sailing with a friend, and was home—alone—before seven. Generally, habitually, Sunday evenings are for reviews on my patients, plans for the upcoming week.”
“Did you see or speak to anyone?”
“My parents, but that was directly after I got home, so well before eight. I made some pasta, had a glass of wine, then I worked until about ten. I did some yoga and was in bed by eleven. I would have the security footage of me coming in that night, and it would show I didn’t go out again. That and my word? That’s it.”
“If you’d provide a copy of that, it would be helpful.”
“Of course.” She rose. “Lynn will get it for you now. I want to say, Ansel was responsible for his own choices. There would be underlying reasons for them, but they were his choices. The man who was murdered? He wasn’t responsible for them.”
“Hobbs had family,” Eve said.
“Yes. His parents—divorced—a stepsister. They weren’t close. We’d dated, as I said, for a year, had started planning our wedding, and I hadn’t met them. I still haven’t. Possibly an underlying reason.”
Possibly, Eve thought, but regardless, she didn’t see Cela Spaceck plotting murder.
They accessed the copy. Eve knew it would support Spaceck’s statement, but every detail mattered.
“Do another check on the parents and stepsister,” Eve told Peabody as they stepped back into the steam bath of summer. “We’ll be thorough.”
“I think he loved her. So does she.”
“Not enough” was Eve’s opinion. “We’ll go in, write these up. We should be able to put together another batch before Greenleaf’s memorial.”
“Right. Since I took the lead, maybe I should drive.”
Eve didn’t bother with the no. “You have two speeds,” she said as she got behind the wheel. “The hundred-and-ten-year-old lady in a sedan approaching the same age, or the sixteen-year-old kid who just jacked a sports car.”
“That’s so not … untrue. Maybe it’s because I don’t get enough practice.”
“Find a reason to requisition a ride sometime, then let me know so I can stay off the roads while you practice. Meanwhile, check the alibis, then write up the last two.”
“I’m scanning Spaceck’s security for Sunday now. I’ve got her leaving at about ten hundred hours. She looks really nice, all casual chic.”
“Really? Gee, what’s she wearing?”
“Okay, okay, just saying. No activity, no in or out throughout the day. I’ve got her returning, going in at eighteen-fifty, and … Wait, she’s coming out again at—Oh. Watering the flowers on the stoop, going back in. No activity, front or rear cams well beyond Greenleaf’s TOD.”
“Write it up,” Eve said, and pulled into the garage.
“Speaking of write-ups, are we going to bag Oglebee on the fraud, theft, and so on?”
“Satisfying, especially since we have no lead suspects or suspects on the murder. But time-consuming. I’m turning it over. Let somebody else have the trouble and satisfaction.”
“It’d be a nice bust,” Peabody considered as they walked to the elevator. “But I get it.”
The elevator, while currently empty, smelled like fresh urine and old sweat from the puddle that likely contained both.
“Somebody pulled in a pisser.” So saying, Eve turned right around and opted for the stairs. “What are you doing?” she asked when Peabody worked her ’link.
“Reporting it to Maintenance.”
“Aw. That’s really sweet. They may get around to dealing with it sometime this decade.”
“I made a contact there.”
“Since when?” Eve switched to glides.
“When you were on vacation. One of the vending machines malfunctioned—”
“Big surprise.”
“And sort of vomited coffee everywhere. I got in a conversation with Hazel—that’s her name—while she was cleaning it up. She’s a big Mavis fan. I got her a disc of a practice session Mavis did in her new studio.”
Peabody looked over with a smug smile. “And Hazel says she’s on it.”
“You bribed her. Kudos.”
“I think of it more as a quid pro quo.”
When they reached Homicide, Eve saw Webster—in dress blues—sitting on a bench. He rose.
“Your wolves wouldn’t let me into your den.”
“Go ahead and get started, Peabody. You can come in now,” she said to Webster. “I told you I’d keep you in the loop.”
“I know, but I haven’t heard from you since … Face looks better.”
She exchanged a look and nod with Jenkinson and his atomic tie as she passed through the bullpen. “Peabody and I just came in from the field, where we conducted five interviews this morning. We conducted interviews yesterday, and we’re eliminating possible suspects.”
When they reached her office, she turned to him. “You know how it works, Webster. We’re working on it. We’re working the angles. We just don’t have anything solid at this point. Where’s Angelo?”
“She’s with the family. They’re having a private thing before the official memorial. A family thing.”
“You should be there.”
“I’m going. I was hoping I could give them something.”
“You can. The investigation is ongoing and active. It’s fucking active, Webster. Feeney’s working it, and he’s got McNab on it. Baxter and Trueheart did an interview and subsequent report on same, after shift yesterday. Roarke’s doing financial checks on his own time, one of which will lead to an arrest on unrelated charges.
“We eliminated five more this morning. Peabody’s checking alibis, but that’s just to keep it clean.”
He dropped down in her ass-biting chair without complaint. “I’m not questioning your work, Dallas. I just want to give his wife and kids something to hang on to. Especially today.”
“I just gave you something they can hang on to. Give them that, and don’t give them what I’m telling you cop to cop. Understood?”
“You’ve got something.”
“I’ve got what my gut and my experience tell me is a solid theory. But it’s a theory. The faked suicide, taking him down at his desk. I think it’s a mirror, so I’m working on that reflection. I’m theorizing that whoever planned this out wanted that mirror, and is therefore connected to someone Greenleaf took down, or was in the process of taking down, who sat at their desk, took their service weapon, and used it. It narrows the suspect field, but it’s still a wide field.”
“That’s good,” Webster said quietly. “That’s a good, solid theory.”
“And telling his wife and children that theory does nothing but twist them up, especially today.”
“You’re right, and I won’t.” But his face had cleared of grief. “I appreciate you sharing it with me.” He got to his feet. “I’d like to share it with Darcia. Cop to cop.”
“No problem.”
“Nobody sticks out?”
“Not yet.”
“All right.” He scrubbed his hands over his face. “Okay. Are you going to make it to the memorial?”
“I plan to.”
“Good. They’re having a kind of wake for him at his daughter’s house after the memorial. You’d be welcome.”
“I think they’d rather I work the case.”
“Yeah, they would. Thanks.”
When he left, she pressed her fingers to her eyes, tried to push away the grief he’d left behind.
She updated her board first, then sat to write up the morning’s work.
She added a note for Mira.
The mirror theory sticks for me. So the Noy case stands out. Suicide, at desk, service weapon on the floor beside the chair—not in the same position or distance, but on the floor beside the chair. The body found by a family member—in this case, the teenage (at the time) daughter. She’s clear. While we’ll take a deeper look at the wife and her current husband, that’s shaky at best. But if there’s one case that reflects, there’s bound to be another in Greenleaf’s long career.
Does this read as viable to you?
As she sent it, Peabody’s clomp came down the hall.
“Just wanted to tell you the alibis check. As for Noy? The widow and her new husband, they attended a dinner party in Oyster Bay Sunday night—arrival about seven, departure about ten-thirty. Plenty of wits there. Also, the new guy comes off clean. No criminal. One previous marriage, ending in divorce almost twelve years ago. One offspring, female. He’s a financial adviser—runs his own firm. Nothing hinky shows. Maybe Roarke could look deeper, but I didn’t find anything on him.”
“Okay. I might pass it to Roarke just to wrap it tight.”
Peabody glanced over as Eve heard more footsteps.
“Hey, Feeney.”
“Hey.” He paused at Eve’s doorway. “Got a minute?”
“Sure.”
He looked more hangdog than usual. Peabody must have seen it, too, as she simply stepped back and left them alone.
Chapter Seventeen
“Got two more for you.”
He stood, hands in the pockets of his baggy brown suit.
To Eve’s eye, it didn’t look like he’d slept in it because he didn’t look like he’d slept much at all.
“Thanks. We went through five this morning.”
He nodded, wandered to her skinny window. “Anything?”
“Did you know Louis Noy? Captain, Anti-crime.”
“That one still leaves a stain. Anti-crime, my ass. Spent his whole fucking career taking payoffs, planting evidence or ditching it depending on the payload. Connected?”
“Nothing I can find, but it’s the only one that stands out.”
She laid out her theory while he nodded, stared out the window.
“We’ll add that in, add a filter, see what we dig out.”
“Okay.” She got up, programmed coffee for both of them. Something here, she thought. He’d get to it in his own time.
“The two I brought you? I knew one of them. Rookied with him. Sanctimonious bastard, or that’s how he played it. Turns out, as he worked his way up to lieutenant, he was hustling street LCs, banging plenty of them, but taking a cut, hustling dealers, taking a cut there. Anyway, he got busted, took himself out. Had two ex-wives by then, a couple kids.
