Truth or Die (3 page)

Her third phone, an old Motorola, was also for work. Except this phone and its number were for a very small and select group. Her sources.

Which was another reason why the Stopper was a good name for this phone. The identity of these sources stopped with her, cold, end of story. Not her editor, not the executive editor, not even Judge Reginald McCabe had ever been told the name of a single source of Claire’s.

As far as that last guy, Judge McCabe of the United States District Court, was concerned, he went so far as to charge Claire with contempt when she refused to identify a source after being subpoenaed in a criminal homicide case involving an American military attaché assigned to the UN. That got her thirty-six days and nights at the Taconic Correctional Facility in Bedford Hills, New York. I have to say, she rocked the orange jumpsuit they made her wear.

“Hello?” Claire answered.

The unwritten ground rules for when she took these calls were simple. If I had been at her place downtown, I’d have gotten up and given her some privacy. Since we were at my place, though, I had squatter’s rights. If she needed privacy, she’d be the one leaving the bedroom.

But she remained sitting there on the edge of the bed. Naked, no less.

She listened for a few moments, the beat-up old flip phone pressed tight against her ear. Then, her voice high-pitched with surprise, she asked,
“Wait, you’re here in the city?”
Quickly, she began tapping her thumb and forefinger together, twisting her wrist in the air. If I’d been a waiter in a restaurant, I would’ve been bringing her the check. But I knew what she actually wanted.

I leaned over to the bedside table closest to me, pulling out the drawer. After handing her a pen, I was about to offer up some paper when I saw her reach for a yellow legal pad that was sitting atop a tall stack of books on the floor, also known as my to-read pile. Mostly biographies. Some historical fiction mixed in as well.

As Claire scribbled something on the pad, I stared at the freckles on the curve of her shoulders, hundreds of them. My eyes drifted down her spine and I smiled, thinking of the trip we took to Block Island a few summers ago, when I rubbed suntan lotion on her bikinied back and sneakily left bare a small stretch of real estate spelling out my initials,
TM
.

“Trevor Mann!” she screamed later that afternoon when she caught a glimpse in the mirror as she stepped out of the shower. After delivering a punch to my shoulder—with more wallop than her thin frame would ever have suggested—she broke up laughing. “I’ve been trademarked!”

Even now, squinting a bit in the dimness of my bedroom, I could still sort of see most of the
T
and some of the
M.
Or so I’d convinced myself.

“Okay, don’t go anywhere,” Claire said into the phone.

Damn.

I was hoping she’d hang up, turn around, and say, “Now, where were we?” but I knew that was beyond wishful thinking. By the time she looked back at me over her shoulder and all those freckles, I already knew.

“You have to go, don’t you?” I said.

She leaned over and kissed me. “I’m sorry.”

Those same unwritten ground rules had it that I wasn’t supposed to pry. But as I watched her dress, and saw the bounce in her step, I couldn’t help myself.

“You’ve got something, don’t you?” I asked. “Something good.”

She nodded with a touch of giddiness.

I stared at her, waiting for something, anything that hinted at what it might be. I must have looked like a dog sitting at the edge of the dinner table, silently begging for scraps.

“I know,” she said finally. “But we have to keep some mystery between us, don’t we?”

Buttoning the last button on her navy-blue blouse, she returned to the side of the bed and kissed me one last time before leaving.

“Call me in the morning,” I said.

She smiled. “Promise.”

A little over two hours later, I was jolted awake by the sound of my phone. It was just shy of one a.m.

Claire’s older sister was calling from Boston. She was crying and couldn’t get the words out. She didn’t have to. It was as if I knew the second I picked up the phone.
There was a certain something simpatico between Claire and me.

Something terrible had happened.

DETECTIVE DAVE Lamont shook my hand firmly in the front waiting area of the Midtown North Precinct on West Fifty-Fourth Street and led me upstairs to the far back corner of a squad room that was empty and silent, save for the baritone hum of the fluorescent lighting overhead.

“Have a seat,” he said, pointing to a folding metal chair in front of his desk. “You want some coffee?”

“No, I’m okay. Thanks.”

He grabbed a mug with a faded New York Giants logo on it that was sitting on top of some overstuffed folders. “I’ll be right back.”

I watched him as he walked off. Lamont was a tall man, filled out by age, but still with a build that suggested a degree of athleticism somewhere in his past. Given the Giants mug, I was thinking there was probably an old high school yearbook out there with the word
linebacker
next to his name.

Claire once showed me her high school yearbook. Her senior quote was from Andrew Marvell: “Had we but world enough and time …”

Christ, this is really happening, isn’t it? She’s really gone. Just like that. I feel numb. No, that’s not right. I feel everything. And it’s hurting like hell.

Claire’s sister, Ellen, had given me Detective Lamont’s name and number. He’d made the call to her up in Boston, breaking the news.

I wasn’t next of kin, husband or fiancé, or even the last person to see Claire alive, but when I’d told Lamont my name over the phone I’d been pretty sure he’d agree to see me right away.

“You were that ADA, weren’t you?” he asked.

“Yeah, that was me,” I answered.

Me, as in that former Manhattan assistant district attorney. Back when I played for the home team. Before I changed jerseys.

Before I got disbarred.

I knew he knew the story. Most every cop in the city did, at least the veterans. It was the kind of story they wouldn’t forget.

Lamont came back now and sat behind his desk with a full mug of coffee. He took a sip as he pulled Claire’s file in front of him, the steam momentarily fogging the bottom half of his drugstore-variety glasses.

Then he shook his head slowly and simply stared at me for a moment, unblinking.

“Fuckin’ random,” he said finally.

I nodded as he flipped open the file to his notes in anticipation of my questions. I had a lot of them.

Christ. The pain is only going to get worse, isn’t it?

“WHERE EXACTLY did it happen?” I asked.

“West End Avenue at Seventy-Third. The taxi was stopped at a red light,” said Lamont. “The assailant smashed the driver’s side window, pistol-whipped the driver until he was knocked out cold, and grabbed his money bag. He then robbed Ms. Parker at gunpoint.”

“Claire,” I said.

“Excuse me?”

“Please call her Claire.”

I knew it was a weird thing for me to say, but weirder still was hearing Lamont refer to Claire as Ms. Parker, not that I blamed him. Victims are always Mr., Mrs., or Ms. for a detective. He was supposed to call her that. I just wasn’t ready to hear it.

“I apologize,” I said. “It’s just that—”

“Don’t worry about it,” he said with a raised palm. He understood. He got it.

“So what happened next?” I asked. “What went wrong?”

“We’re not sure, exactly. Best we can tell, she fully cooperated, didn’t put up a fight.”

That made sense. Claire might have been your prototypical “tough” New Yorker, but she was also no fool. She didn’t own anything she’d risk her life to keep.
Does anyone?

No, she definitely knew the drill. Never be a statistic. If your taxi gets jacked, you do exactly as told.

“And you said the driver was knocked out¸ right? He didn’t hear anything?” I asked.

“Not even the gunshots,” said Lamont. “In fact, he didn’t actually regain consciousness until after the first two officers arrived at the scene.”

“Who called it in?”

“An older couple walking nearby.”

“What did they see?”

“The shooter running back to his car, which was behind the taxi. They were thirty or forty yards away; they didn’t get a good look.”

“Any other witnesses?”

“You’d think, but no. Then again, residential block … after midnight,” he said. “We’ll obviously follow up in the area tomorrow. Talk to the driver, too. He was taken to St. Luke’s before we arrived.”

I leaned back in my chair, a metal hinge somewhere below the seat creaking its age. I must have had a dozen more questions for Lamont, each one trying to get me that much closer to being in the taxi with Claire, to knowing what had really happened.

To knowing whether or not it truly was …
fuckin’ random
.

But I wasn’t fooling anyone. Not Lamont, and especially not myself. All I was doing was procrastinating, trying hopelessly to avoid asking the one question I was truly dreading.

I couldn’t avoid it any longer.

“FOR THE record, you were never in here,” said Lamont, pausing at a closed door toward the back corner of the precinct house.

I stared at him blankly as if I were some chronic sufferer of short-term memory loss.
“In where?”
I asked.

He smirked. Then he opened the door.

The windowless room I followed him into was only slightly bigger than claustrophobic. After closing the door behind us, Lamont introduced me to his partner, Detective Mike McGeary, who was at the helm of what looked like one of those video arcade games where you sit in a captain’s chair shooting at alien spaceships on a large screen. He was even holding what looked like a joystick.

McGeary, square-jawed and bald, gave Lamont a sideways glance that all but screamed,
What the hell is he doing in here?

“Mr. Mann was a close acquaintance of the victim,” said Lamont. He added a slight emphasis on my last name, as if to jog his partner’s memory.

McGeary studied me in the dim light of the room until he put my face and name together. Perhaps he was remembering the cover of the
New York Post
a couple of years back.
An Honest Mann
, read the headline.

“Yeah, fine,” McGeary said finally.

It wasn’t exactly a ringing endorsement, but it was enough to consider the issue of my being there resolved. I could stay. I could see the recording.

I could watch, frame by frame, the murder of the woman I loved.

Lamont hadn’t had to tell me there was a surveillance camera in the taxi. I’d known right away, given how he’d described the shooting over the phone, some of the details he had. There were little things no eyewitnesses could ever provide. Had there been any eyewitnesses, that is.

Lamont removed his glasses, wearily pinching the bridge of his nose. No one ever truly gets used to the graveyard shift. “Any matches so far?” he asked his partner.

McGeary shook his head.

I glanced at the large monitor, which had shifted into screen saver mode, an NYPD logo floating about. Lamont, I could tell, was waiting for me to ask him about the space-age console, the reason I wasn’t supposed to be in the room. The machine obviously did a little more than just digital playback.

But I didn’t ask. I already knew.

I’m sure the thing had an official name, something ultra-high-tech sounding, but back when I was in the DA’s office I’d only ever heard it referred to by its nickname, CrackerJack. What it did was combine every known recognition software program into one giant cross-referencing “decoder” that was linked to practically every criminal database in the country, as well as those from twenty-three other countries, or basically all of our official allies in the “war on terror.”

In short, given any image at any angle of any suspected terrorist, CrackerJack could source a litany of identifying characteristics, be it an exposed mole or tattoo; the exact measurements between the suspect’s eyes, ears, nose, and mouth; or even a piece of jewelry. Clothing, too. Apparently, for all the precautions terrorists take in their planning, it rarely occurs to them that wearing the same polyester shirt in London, Cairo, and Islamabad might be a bad idea.

Of course, it didn’t take long for law enforcement in major cities—where CrackerJacks were heavily deployed by the Department of Homeland Security—to realize that these machines didn’t have to identify just terrorists. Anyone with a criminal record was fair game.

So here was McGeary going through the recording sent over by the New York Taxi & Limousine Commission to see if any image of the shooter triggered a match. And here was me, having asked if I could watch it, too.

“Mike, cue it up from the beginning, will you?” said Lamont.

McGeary punched a button and then another until the screen lit up with the first frame, the taxi having pulled over to pick Claire up. The image was grainy, black-and-white, like on an old tube television with a set of rabbit ears. But what little I could see was still way too much.

It was exactly as Lamont had described it. The shooter smashes the driver’s side window, beating the driver senseless with the butt of his gun. He’s wearing a dark turtleneck and a ski mask with holes for the eyes, nose, and mouth. His gloves are tight, like those Isotoners that O. J. Simpson pretended didn’t fit.

So far, Claire is barely visible. Not once can I see her face. Then I do.

It’s right after the shooter snatches the driver’s money bag. He swings his gun, aiming it at Claire in the backseat. She jolts. There’s no Plexiglas divider. There’s nothing but air.

Presumably, he says something to her, but the back of his head is toward the camera. Claire offers up her purse. He takes it and she says something. I was never any good at reading lips.

He should be leaving. Running away. Instead, he swings out and around, opening the rear door. He’s out of frame for no more than three seconds. Then all I see is his outstretched arm. And the fear in her eyes.