Cover-up (31 page)

Melanie told Agent Crockett the news, then sent him down to his car with a bag of microwaved popcorn and a can of Diet Coke. She brushed her teeth, tucked the Beretta in to sleep beside her on the
nightstand, got her cell phone out in case she needed to call for help, and huddled under the covers.

She’d planned to have a good cry, but she just couldn’t. She felt too numb and empty inside. Instead, she stared at the ceiling in the dark for what felt like hours, and fell asleep wondering where her life was going.

41

M
elanie opened her eyes
to dazzling sunlight and a shrieking telephone. Her cell was going nuts right beside her head, half hidden under the pillow.

“Hello?” she mumbled. Her brain was foggy from lack of sleep. Something terrible clawed at the edge of her consciousness, then broke over her like a wave.

Dan!

“Miss Vargas? Hello? Are you there?”

Her throat burned with tears, but she wouldn’t let herself cry. “Who’s this?” she managed, her voice barely audible.

“Peter Terrozzi from the U.S. Marshal’s Service. I’m assigned to protect you this morning. I’m standing down in the lobby, ma’am. Your doorman buzzed you several times on the intercom but got no response.”

Melanie held the cell away from her ear for a moment and looked at it. Other things were falling into place now. The e-mails from yesterday. The Butcher.

“How did you get my cell-phone number?” she asked.

“From my office, ma’am, which presumably got it from your office.”

“I need a minute, Deputy. Stay where you are, okay? I have to make a phone call.”

“Uh…okay,” he said, sounding confused.

Under present circumstances, Melanie couldn’t just let some stranger into her apartment because he claimed to be her protection detail. Mark Sonschein was the one who’d made the arrangements with the U.S. Marshal’s Service. She got out her office directory and paged him. By the time he called back, she’d made a much-needed pot of coffee, and she was standing at the kitchen counter in her nightgown, drinking some, her gun set down next to the milk carton.

“Sonschein here. Somebody page me?”

“Mark, Melanie Vargas.”

“I was just about to call you.”

“My protection detail is down in the lobby. I need to confirm his name and get a physical description before I let him in.”

“Smart move, but you’ll have to call the Marshal’s Service. They didn’t tell me who they planned to send.”

“Oh, so why were you—”

“Calling? Because I just heard from the FBI. We got a big break, and I need you to come into the office right away to follow up on it. Turns out you were on the right track, Melanie. More than anybody knew. The Bureau traced the final e-mail the Butcher sent you last night. You know, the one where he told us to pound sand, that he wasn’t falling for the ruse?”

“Yes?”

“The e-mail was sent from the office of Dr. Benedict Welch.”

M
elanie grabbed her bathrobe from the bedroom and ran to answer the buzzer. She tried to put her gun into the pocket, but something
was in the way. Reaching in, she pulled out a pair of lace panties. The other night, in between Dan’s birthday celebration and getting called out to the crime scene, they’d done it on Melanie’s living room couch. Somehow the panties had ended up in her bathrobe pocket. She looked down at the wispy fabric in her hand as if she was seeing an artifact from another century. Would she ever have sex with Dan again?

She shoved the panties back where she’d found them, put the gun in her other pocket, and peered through the peephole. The man she saw matched the description she’d just been given over the phone by the U.S. Marshal’s Service: short, muscular, balding. He did not match the description of the Central Park Butcher, to the extent they had one. While this should have reassured her, it didn’t. According to what David Harris had told them, the Butcher was a considerably larger man than the one who now stood outside her door.

“Deputy Terrozzi?”

“Yes, ma’am. You can call me Pete. I was starting to think I was at the wrong door.”

“No. I’m here. Can I see your shield, please?”

He held his shield up in front of the peephole. It looked official enough. She undid all three locks and opened the door. Terrozzi was no taller than Melanie and wide as he was high, with biceps and thighs thick as hams. His head was shaved, and from the pattern of the dark stubble it was plain to see this was done to camouflage encroaching baldness. His pleasant smile marked him as a nice guy who worked out a lot rather than a fearsome pit bull of a cop. If this was her protection against the psycho who’d mutilated Suzanne Shepard and shot David Harris in the back, Melanie couldn’t help worrying that he wouldn’t be equal to the task.

“Rough night?” he asked, smiling as he took in her bed head and swollen eyes.

“I was nervous. I didn’t sleep well. I don’t know whether you were briefed, but the man who threatened me is extremely dangerous.”

“Sure, but you were in good hands. The agent who just left struck me as extremely competent.”

“You met Tim Crockett outside?”

“Crockett? No. He said his name was Dan O’Reilly.”

Melanie stared at him in stunned silence.

“May I come in?” Terrozzi asked finally.

“Oh. Sure.”

Melanie held the door open. She told Terrozzi where to find the coffee, and turned away to go shower and dress.

“Uh, Miss Vargas?” he said.

“Yes?”

“What’s that in your pocket?”

She looked down. A blush started on her cheeks because she thought he was asking about the panties, but his gaze was fixed on the handle of the Beretta protruding from her bathrobe pocket.

“That’s my gun,” she said.

“Uh-uh.” He held out his hand. “Hand it over.”

“Excuse me?”

“Are you qualified with that thing?”

“I go to the range,” Melanie said indignantly.

“What, like once a month?”

She shrugged. It was less than that, actually. A lot less.

“I can’t protect you if I’m worried about you whipping out a pistol and plugging me one by mistake,” Terrozzi said.

Melanie hesitated. She believed this guy was indeed her protection detail; she just didn’t trust him to protect her. She toyed with the idea of keeping the gun and getting rid of Terrozzi instead.

“That’s not me talking,” he said, seeing her hesitation. “It’s U.S. Marshal’s Service protocol. ‘The protectee should remain unarmed unless the protectee is duly qualified and authorized to carry a firearm.’ From what my supervisor told me, which was based on what
your supervisor, Mr. Sonschein, told him, you’re not authorized to carry a firearm as part of your duties. Am I right?”

The weight of all those supervisors was too much for Melanie to fight. Reluctantly, she handed Terrozzi the gun.

“But I want it back whenever you’re not with me,” she insisted.

“I’ll always be with you. From what I understand, I’m stuck to you like glue till the Butcher’s caught. We’re gonna become
very
good friends.”

Time to solve the damn case,
Melanie thought.

42

M
elanie and Mark Sonschein sat
in his office, strategizing their next move.

“We have PC to search Welch’s office, because that’s where the Butcher sent the e-mail from,” Melanie said. “But we don’t have an eyewitness who can finger Welch and say he sent the e-mail himself. Without that, Welch can argue somebody else got access to his office computer and did the deed. Bottom line, we don’t have enough to arrest him for murder.”

“One fallback position would be to get the search warrant for now, and hope that a search of his office turns up proof of the murder,” Mark said.

“And if it doesn’t? Welch is still on the street. You’ve seen the crime-scene photos from the Shepard murder.”

“Yes, and I’ve read those sickening e-mails he sent you. I want the Butcher locked up as badly as you do. Isn’t there something else we can arrest him for?”

“Conspiring to burglarize Suzanne Shepard’s apartment,” Melanie said. “But my proof is weak. I have the testimony of one cooperator
with no corroboration. Miles Ortiz. He’s got a sheet as long as your arm, and he looks the part, too. I don’t see putting him up against a supposedly reputable doctor. Not with Boutros on duty.”

“She’s still on?” Mark asked, frowning.

“Until tomorrow morning. We could wait.” Judge-shopping was an honored tradition in their office.

“Who’s on duty if we wait?”

Melanie flipped through the court calendar she had Scotch-taped to the inside of her official U.S. Government Planner. “Warner. Even worse.”

“Hmm.” Mark steepled his fingers and thought. “Reputable doctor. But he’s not, right? Didn’t you say Welch is a fraud?”

“Yes, but practicing medicine without a license? We can’t get him remanded on that,” Melanie asked.

“I’m not suggesting we arrest him for practicing medicine without a license. I’m saying maybe the atmospherics make it easier to convince a judge…” He trailed off.

“What, to issue a warrant for murder when we don’t have the proof to back it up? I don’t think so. Not Boutros. And the detective who was researching Welch’s background is on a plane on her way back from Tulsa. I won’t even have proof of the false name in my hands until late tonight or tomorrow morning.”

They were both silent for a minute.

“Did you find out anything more about that old murder case in California, the one your cooperator said was discussed in the file he stole?” Mark asked.

“We came up with twenty-seven known murders of strippers in the relevant time period,” Melanie said. “We’ll have Ortiz look through them and see if he can pick out the right one, but it’s a long shot. Besides, somebody else was convicted for the murder that Ortiz saw in the file, so we’re not even sure what the connection is.”

“What a mess,” Mark said.

They were silent again.

“You know what I think we should do?” Melanie asked.

“What?”

“Set up a drug buy. Ortiz puts Welch in a major methamphetamine conspiracy. If Welch were to deliver drugs, not only could we get him remanded, but I bet we could get warrants for his apartment as well as his office.”

Mark nodded. “That’s by far the best idea I’ve heard. Do it.”

Y
ou gonna lock Welch up, no problem,” Miles Ortiz said. “I know the man. Show him the green, and he come running.”

Melanie had authorized Detective Julian Hay to requisition twenty thousand dollars in marked buy money. It sat in an open metal briefcase on Melanie’s desk, bundled with rubber bands and arranged in neat stacks. Miles lifted up his Flex Gym T-shirt, exposing coffee-colored skin and rippling abs. Julian’s face was set in deep concentration as he taped a recording device securely to Miles’s lower back. Julian knew about the e-mail, and knew that Benedict Welch was suspected of being the killer they were calling the Central Park Butcher. But there was no need to tell Miles that.

“He’s really gonna do this out in the open in a restaurant?” Julian asked dubiously, tearing another piece of black electrical tape from the roll.

“He ain’t got no fear,” Miles said. “Never been caught before, never tasted the inside. He get his kicks selling drugs in front of people’s eyes and they don’t know what’s happening.”

“Brazen,” Melanie said. “The restaurant he picked is a real Upper East Side haunt. Ladies who lunch. Or brunch, I should say. It’s Sunday.”

Miles fingered a cigarette and tucked it behind his ear like a pencil.

“Good to go,” Julian said, straightening up. “Let’s move.”

Melanie and Julian accompanied Miles uptown. They planned to sit in Julian’s undercover vehicle and listen to the buy unfold over the wire. Melanie would decide when they had enough evidence to make an arrest. The car was a late-model black Lincoln Navigator with custom rims and ultradark tints. It had been seized from a Brooklyn kingpin whose current address was twenty-three-hour lockdown at FCI-Florence. The Navigator was a perfect ride for a drug buy on Queens Boulevard, but it stuck out among the more discreet vehicles of the Upper East Side, so Julian dropped Miles down the block from the meet location and found an inconspicuous parking spot on a side street where they still had a decent view.

The location Welch had chosen was a posh sidewalk café with marble-topped tables set up outside a Madison Avenue bistro. Miles sat down alone at a table to wait for Welch to arrive. Julian tuned his two-way radio to the right frequency and tested to make sure he was picking up Miles as well as the other agents, who were stationed in the surrounding blocks awaiting the arrest signal. When he was done with that task, he took some test shots with the large digital camera that hung around his neck.

Within minutes, a white Escalade pulled up beside the Navigator and parked them in, looking every bit as glitzy as they did.

“Shit, they’re blocking my view,” Julian said, lowering his camera. “That’s Kim Savitt’s car,” Melanie said. She hunkered down in her seat, until she remembered they had dark tinted windows. Kim would never spot her.

“Kim Savitt’s
here
?” Julian asked.

“Yeah, but why, I haven’t a clue. Maybe she gave Welch a ride?”

“I never met her. When she hooked me up with Miles, I spoke to her over the phone. I hear she’s something to see.”

The driver came around and opened Kim’s door, holding out his
hand. A slender, tanned arm reached out. Long, bare legs ending in strappy sandals stepped to the pavement, followed by a lithe torso and big chest, wrapped up in the most casually chic little cotton mini-dress. Acres of blond hair completed the effect.

“Whoa,” Julian said. The exclamation sounded involuntary.

“Who invited her?” Melanie demanded.

“I don’t know, but I’m not complaining. Damn, I love my job.” And he lifted his camera and snapped a picture.

“Miss Hottie could queer our deal, Julian. Miles hasn’t seen her since he found out she set him up. He’ll go ballistic. Hand me that radio, quick.”